Chapter 85

Below the wine-tower all was a churning knot. Countless voices cried that someone was robbing the prisoner-carts, and then came the clash of short blades, on and on.

Chen Dasheng and Li Jinggui had both come off the battlefield, and were the quickest in the room, both at the window in a breath. But they didn't go down. They only leaned by the window-crack, heads stacked, and looked below.

That they didn't go down put Wei Xuanhe in a fret. His eyes went red, his mouth trembled, and his body shook as he stared at Chen Dasheng.

In his mind he'd already laid out ink and brush, ready, once this legendary old saber went down, to write him a great piece. How he'd face the foe, how he'd stand off a hundred alone, how he'd stride the main street sword in hand.

Below it was a din of killing to shake the sky... and why wouldn't he go down?

Chen Dasheng watched a while, then straightened and shook his head: "Six to a squad, foot-soldiers' work, and it's the first I've seen this teamwork of theirs. It's a bit loose."

He put a hand over the window-crack, and Li Jinggui couldn't watch either, but took no offense, only nodded: "Mm, the old Gui house drilled its troops just so. Their drill-masters all liked this teamwork. Six to a squad, and there'll be a hundred and fifty of them here at the least." He breathed out: "There's a bold lot. To move at the Son of Heaven's feet, no one who came will get off. Not a man of them will live."

When trouble breaks out, the bystanders suffer for it. The folk clustered at the roadside to watch the show screamed and scattered, and no few dived into this wine-tower. Feet came pounding up to the second floor, and someone in a fright shoved this door open. There was a clatter, three or five women came in, saw at a glance the room was all men, and ran out again in a fright.

Li Jinggui glanced at Kang Rui, and Kang Rui went and shut the door, barred it, and set his back against it.

Chen Dasheng, if you please, sat down again with Li Jinggui and began to eat. Screams kept coming up from below, and Wei Xuanhe, forcing his excitement down, sat too, but seeing these two so unconcerned, he could bear it no longer and asked at last: "You two? They're fighting like this below, and you won't go help?"

Li Jinggui fished a quail's egg from the bottom of his bowl, put it in his mouth, chewed a while, and said: "Go down for what?"

Wei Xuanhe was astonished. He pointed below and said hotly: "To help!"

Li Jinggui made a tsk, and looked at him, rather put out: "Help how, hinder them? Am I mad, to go doing this thankless broken business?"

Wei Xuanhe sprang up and looked out the window again, then drew back careful, and dropped his voice: "A good many, a good many of our own... our own officers are lying on the ground down there. Go and look! Truly!"

Li Jinggui was helpless: "I needn't look. The Gui house's soldiers eat Great Liang's pay too. Who knows who's lying on the ground? Friend and foe all mixed, and there's no Gui written on their brows. If I cut the wrong man, who's to answer? You?"

Seeing Li Jinggui go on teasing Wei Xuanhe, Chen Dasheng gave him a kick, and turned to explain to the honest man: "The first thing we learned in the recruit camp was, everything goes by the army's orders. What's not yours to do, don't go butting in to help. That way you live a bit longer."

This time even Kang Rui was startled. He dared not ask, but stared wide-eyed at the two of them.

Wei Xuanhe was furious past bearing, and pointed back and forth at them: "You, you, you, you two, you..."

The killing below was truly grating on the ear, and Li Jinggui grew a little vexed too. He dropped his chopsticks and said to Wei Xuanhe: "Brother Zhiheng, those cries you heard just now, that someone was robbing the carts, can you tell who it was that cried them?"

Zhiheng was Wei Xuanhe's courtesy-name.

Wei Xuanhe of course could not, and shook his head hard.

Li Jinggui said: "First to last, it was the onlooking folk crying it. Not one officer called for help. How would you have us go down?"

Wei Xuanhe was blank a long while, and unable to work it out, looked to Chen Dasheng. Chen Dasheng told him plainly: "For a seizing like this, so big, there'll be two martial-merit marquises at the least holding the reins today. I don't know which garrison's men have gone, but gone they surely have, and Jiusi Hall men besides. That they don't call for help means they can handle it themselves. For us two to go leaping down would only make trouble, help or no help."

Wei Xuanhe was muddled. He sat down, looked behind him, dragged his chair to a steadier spot, tucked his legs up on it, and muttered: "How is it making trouble? Aren't you, aren't you famous generals?"

Li Jinggui shook his head, helpless. He didn't want to say it, and feared besides to stir up more talk and have Wei Xuanhe think the less of him, so he only said: "The so-called famous generals of the battlefield are mostly the sort who love to stand out and can't fight."

Chen Dasheng nodded: "To fight the many with the few is always a thing done from need. Only when the strategy has failed do you come to such a pass. A truly good general is steady, like Earl Chang. He's that kind of general, and if a man were his soldier, the troops would gladly be that lord's vanguard, for at least there's a way to live. He fights only the steady fights, and so you think him no great thing. As for the Tan Second General's sort, heh."

That said, Li Jinggui gave him a glance and nodded: "A true general reckons out beforehand every dangerous pass. You've the right of it. For us to go leaping down like that, however many we cut, would only show that the commander of today's seizing hadn't reckoned on the mishap, and that's a great fault.

"Help them well, and my grandfather's the Grand Tutor of the day, and he's Attendant She's only seedling, the old saber the Emperor prizes most. They daren't cross us, and would have to cut us half the credit, and the men would have sold their lives for nothing."

Chen Dasheng took it up: "Just so. And help them badly, and I'm the Emperor's Gate Marquis and he's the Emperor's foster-son, and that slaps the elders' faces. Should we take hurt, no one would say a word at first, but our elders would hate today's commander for it, and that's making trouble... Go out, and meet some small-minded man, and he'd hate us to death."

The words weren't out when someone flew up onto the roof, kicked the window open, and made to leap into the room. Wei Xuanhe gave a scream of fright, and before he'd done screaming it was all over below.

He saw Li Jinggui haul up a drum-stool and bring it down on the man coming in. But the lord Recorder was quicker. He went to meet the man's blade, and only at the very edge of it did he slip aside, and by the time the man's scream was out, two chopsticks had pierced the sockets of both his shoulders. His strength went out of him on the instant, and the drum-stool caught him full, and he slid down over the tiles of the wine-tower eaves and fell.

Fast, so fast!

Li Jinggui laughed too, and waved a hand, and Wei Xuanhe and Kang Rui watched a few men drag off several bloody bodies, dead or alive there was no telling, to lend a hand elsewhere.

Where had those two ever seen such a thing? Their legs went soft under them.

Li Jinggui shut the window again, sat, clinked a cup with Chen Dasheng and drank it off, and said: "Brother Feilian's hand is quick."

Chen Dasheng nodded, and looked at his own hand: "It itched. I did want to go down, truly."

Who didn't? Li Jinggui heard it with envy in his eyes, and gave a nod and a grunt.

The killing on the long street below grew louder and louder, and the thick smell of blood spread everywhere, and grew more and more familiar. Chen Dasheng and Li Jinggui were both old hands, and had scarce stirred in near a year, and could hardly hold their battle-heart down. They dared not look, afraid they'd not master themselves and leap down, and could only press it down cup by cup, a cold coming off them that set the other two shaking with fright.

Below, they went at it a full hour before it slowly quieted, and from far off came the even tramp of soldiers marching in ranks.

Chen Dasheng puffed his cheeks and let out a breath: "Now they'll lock the streets and search."

Li Jinggui nodded, drew a bronze token from his boot, and beckoned to Chen Dasheng, and Chen Dasheng drew a token from his own boot and handed it to him.

Li Jinggui pointed at the door and told Kang Rui: "Go hang these at the door."

Kang Rui looked at this wholly changed young lord, and mastered the softness in his legs, propped himself up, went to the door, hung the tokens, and drew it to.

Wei Xuanhe and Kang Rui thought this long street would fall quiet after the slaughter, but before half an incense-stick's time it was noisier still.

The Governor-General of the Yanjing Metropolis and the Prefect of Shuntian came in person with a train of clerks and runners, and with the Five Armies Command began a house-to-house search from the head of the street to the tail. Anyone not on the household registers, anyone without three or more to vouch him clean, was taken away.

The search was strict and swift, and heard no argument. As with one of this wine-tower's own hands, just come from the country and only two days in, who had but one witness, and the manager could not vouch his origins, and so he was taken away quick, no half-word of explanation heard.

The search ran till the turn of the hour of yin before the curfew lifted, and then the whole street was thick with clustered, talking crowds.

Chen Dasheng and the rest had sat till their very bones were soft, and had drunk a few cups more, and went down half tipsy.

Wei Xuanhe took out silver to settle the reckoning, but could find no one. A trembling boy came out to explain that the manager had been caught up in it and called to the Shuntian yamen for questioning.

Still, one mustn't take a man's goods for nothing. Wei Xuanhe took brush and ink from the counter, wrote a note and weighed it down, that when the manager came back he should send someone to Wei's gate-lodge tomorrow to settle up.

Going out again, he saw Chen Dasheng and Li Jinggui standing together in a corner, looking at one spot, the very place where the man off the roof had fallen.

Looking close, Wei Xuanhe found there was not a drop of blood to be seen. It had been swept clean.

Not knowing whether to laugh or wonder, he said, puzzled: "What a thing, and at this hour. Why sweep this?"

At that they both looked at Wei Xuanhe, then at the folk clustered nearby. Chen Dasheng turned to look up the street, and Li Jinggui came to Wei Xuanhe's side and explained: "Brother Zhiheng, leave any trace here at all, and these folk will crowd to see it. As long as the trace is there, they'll come and look. Leave it a month and they'll look a month. This is Yanjing, and to block any road is trouble. Understand now?"

So many things had been turned upside down for Wei Xuanhe today. He stood there thinking a good while, worked it out, and sighed at last: "You Board of War men, are you all like this?"

Chen Dasheng dug his horse out of the stable, led it out, and said with a smile: "Near enough. This work of guarding the capital, it was Liu Daya taught me it..." Even as he spoke he saw several parties ride past on the main street, and watching them off, he made a tsk: "Someone's in for it. Whose watch is it today?"

Li Jinggui hadn't ridden, and his carriage was nowhere to be found now either, so he walked out with him, and said as they went: "How many do you say they got away?"

Kang Rui, who'd not dared put in a word all this while, could hold it no longer, and cried out in alarm: "Got away?!"

The people on the street all looked their way, and the eyes hidden in the crowd went wrong at once.

Li Jinggui, helpless, drew the token from his boot again, held it up and turned once about, then glared at Kang Rui with no good face, and Kang Rui, sick with regret, slapped himself twice.

Wei Xuanhe was dying of curiosity, but held it, and only when he'd walked to the street-mouth and it was near empty did he ask low: "How did you know the cart-robbing over there had come off?"

There was no harm in telling it. Chen Dasheng turned and said: "The courier-horse went out."

Wei Xuanhe didn't follow, and asked: "Courier-horse?"

Chen Dasheng nodded: "Mm, the army's fast horse for carrying word. From today, three days, coming and going at Yanjing will be a business, and there'll be checkpoints on every road and byway round about, I'll be bound."

That said, he looked at Wei Xuanhe, curious: "You're unlike the men I'm used to."

Wei Xuanhe started, and knew Chen Dasheng's meaning. Of the young lords of Yanjing, those who could run with Chen Dasheng's set had all shared the hardship of Great Liang's founding. Even his father said the Emperor was rearing them as counsellors for the next reign's sovereign.

The likes of him, whose family had kept him close, had spent the war years hiding in the country, and his father said too: think of no future for five years, plainly and honestly lay a good foundation, that's the right road.

To hide is no shame. At the least, his kin were all living. How many of the Emperor's foster-sons had lived?

Wei Xuanhe laughed: "It's so. I sat in the country before and saw nothing of the world. Forgive my green ways."

Chen Dasheng smiled, and seeing him so humble, gave him a word: "Go back today and don't go noising this about. Take it that you saw nothing."

The Gui house had deep roots and a wide branch. Curious as everyone was, to tell it about as idle talk showed a cold heart, when all was said.

Wei Xuanhe nodded at once, looked left and right, and took his leave of them. As for his boy, and his hand-warmer and cloak, there was no knowing where they were now, and he didn't go looking.

Watching Wei Xuanhe off, Chen Dasheng said to Li Jinggui: "Zhiheng's had a fright."

Li Jinggui was rather dazed, and said after a while: "Ah, I didn't think he'd be so timid. Shut up too long, and a man goes soft in the head. But I like that soft honesty of his. Better at least than that pack of louts Aman knows."

"Each has his own good, and neither's a bad man," said Chen Dasheng, and stopped his horse and looked toward the street-mouth.

At the inner-city street-mouth, Liu Daya and a band of Jinwu Guards were searching the coming and going crowd.

Chen Dasheng smiled, and led his horse over: "Brother Liu, they roused you too?"

Liu Daya had long known he was in the street. Seeing him, he drew him and Li Jinggui into a nook and said: "The rest are no matter. The thing is, Gui Rong got away, and in the deep of the twelfth month too, two turns, three turns of it souring the Emperor's heart, muddling up the whole of Yanjing's New Year. Hmph, this business, there'll be work in it yet!"

Chen Dasheng patted his shoulder to comfort him: "Hard on you! My father didn't go over there, I hope?"

Liu Daya waved a hand: "No. Our Attendant She sees only to the Board of Revenue's business. He can't be bothered with the Autumn Office's affairs. It's the Emperor, though..." He dropped his voice: "The Emperor's been in a temper since yesterday."

Chen Dasheng made a face, took his horse's reins, and went straight through the inner-city checkpoint, and no one stopped him. Li Jinggui didn't follow, but, wanting no trouble, turned and went home.

Before long She Qingling saw his good boy come into his little courtyard room. A little surprised, he set down his book, a smile at the corner of his mouth, and asked: "How is it you're here?"

Chen Dasheng sat across from him, rather sulky: "I came first thing this morning." He reached for Attendant She's teapot and poured himself a cup, and went on: "I went walking in the market, and got blocked in on the East Street, and saw the whole show. On my way out Liu Daya told me Gui Rong got away."

That Gui Rong had got away was old news to She Qingling. He looked at Chen Dasheng, and said instead of another thing.

"The Gui house fallen, there's a Jindian Provincial Commissioner's seat left empty."

At that Chen Dasheng sighed: "A great border-governor, father. Tell me, what was he thinking, to run his charge into such a state?"

She Qingling took up a dried-leaf bookmark and slid it into the book, and said mildly: "A poor man come suddenly into fortune. His seat fit him, but his head didn't keep up. His means fell short of the border-governor's cap he'd put on, and so he couldn't guard his own wealth. The frontier's a tangled place to begin with, and the Gui house's fall had its signs long since." He lifted his eyes to his foster-son, and said a thing that moved him: "Yesterday Li Zhang and two old lords of the Six Boards together put forward Tan Shouyi to take over as Provincial Commissioner of Jindian. I did not oppose it. The thing's likely settled now."

Chen Dasheng's hand was very steady over his tea. Only the sound of the cup going down was a little loud.

He stood, and the sound and the motion of him opening his foster-father's chest for a change of clothes were loud too, with a thread of anger in them, not to be seen by anyone who didn't look close and know him.

She Qingling, at his ease, hands behind him, holding back a laugh, asked: "What are you taking my things for?"

Chen Dasheng paid him no mind, but went to the door and called two little eunuchs to carry out the chest of things, and only when he'd done turned back to She Qingling: "There's no us at home eating well and warm and only father left out here to wear away alone."

Attendant She nodded, pleased, and smiled: "A well-turned phrase. You're coming along. I'll not go. I'm used to being alone."

But Chen Dasheng glared at him: "I'm not used to it! I was thinking only yesterday. Over my way there's a whole houseful, the old lady's mind's at rest, they've all a merry crowd about them, and why should you keep this palace like a lone soldier in a lone city? The Emperor has his own family, and what have you? Nothing but me to live for. And if I take no hand, with that stubborn streak of yours you'll squeeze out thirty or fifty lonely poems over a great festival."

Attendant She could hold his laugh no longer, and scolded, laughing: "Thirty or fifty, my eye, not one! No wonder your wife curses you a fool all day. Ai, this while I've watched you leaping about. What now? Were you angry just now?"

Chen Dasheng tore off a cloth, rolled his father's clothes in it, tied it, and tossed it on the table: "A blink of a thing. It's passed."

Attendant She laughed, and loosed his chief-steward's robe and threw it on the kang, and Chen Dasheng dug in the chest and brought out an old-silk fox-fur-edged coat to put on his father, saying as he did: "Your son thought, you're surely cleverer than I am. If you've arranged it so, you've your reasons."

Attendant She stopped his hands and tied his own sash, still fond of looking well, and found a bronze mirror to study himself in, and said: "The Gui house fell because when trouble came to it no one at court sent word, and by the time they'd waken to it there was no arguing left, they were on their knees in the hall answering. What you should fight for is a voice at court. Understand?"

Chen Dasheng stood a while thinking, then nodded: "Mm. Jindian is far off, the mountains high and the Emperor distant. Great power in hand, but the sprawl of it forces you to draw your own men up and down and knot your lines together, and given time the Grand Secretariat and the Six Boards in the capital lose sight of you..."

The little eunuchs came in to carry the things, and She Qingling and Chen Dasheng let the matter drop. But She Qingling sat at the desk, took up a brush, and wrote a few words on it as he went: "Gone home with my son to keep the New Year."

He didn't even send word to the Emperor before he left.

These days he'd been sore harried. All sorts came before him to say their muddled things, and on the strength of what should he understand, on the strength of what should he bear it? He'd not bear it!

Then go and fetch him. Carry him back bodily if you must. Why be such a fool?

And so, the fool gone off first thing in the morning, Qi Qian'er set to work. What was her father? A young lord reared of a famous house. Suffer great hardship as he had after, he'd never once left the richest nest under heaven.

Her own house did well enough now, but set beside such a man's life it fell a long way short.

So Qi Qian'er rose and went first to the east wing of the back courtyard, and had Jixiang's wife bring people to heat the kang and clean it out.

Hearing his old master was coming, She Jixiang wept on the spot for gladness. The two of them, husband and wife, set the place to rights with the tears and snot running down.

The room set right, the whole household waited in the front courtyard, wide-eyed, until the sky went dim, and then they saw Chen Dasheng come driving the cart home, all smiles.

Qi Qian'er ran out to meet him at the lane-mouth, and when her father climbed down from the cart himself she smiled and came up complaining: "Father, so you deigned to come home at last."

She Qingling was startled. He let her help him down, took a hand-warmer, and Chen Dasheng ran over and fetched a cloak from the back of the cart and wrapped him in it.

Son and daughter-in-law walked him home about them, and the daughter-in-law complained as she went: "Now tell me, why is your temper so stubborn? Have we no nest here? No place for you to come back to? You must go staying with that Yang lot?"

She Qingling was struck blank at the scolding, his lips only trembling. Come to the gate, he stood stock-still again.

Over the gate were written a few words he found very poor.

"The Gate Welcomes a Hundred Blessings."

Seeing her father look close, Qi Qian'er smiled, and praised herself with a straight face: "Father, my writing's not bad, eh?"

Could he say it wasn't? Could he say it was limp and stiff, no force to it, no stroke to it?

Driven to it, with the man to feed and warm hereafter, She Qingling could only nod: "It'll, it'll do."

Qi Qian'er knew his meaning, and said, brazen: "Better than your son's a hundred times, anyhow."

At that She Qingling laughed: "That's true."

Chen Dasheng was unconvinced: "How many days have I studied?"

Talking so, they went in as easy as you please, and were hurried, hemmed round against any breath of wind, to the back courtyard.

The house was very small, but two courtyards front and back, but She Qingling weighed it with the greatest care, counting every step out clear.

At the door of the east wing of the back courtyard the old lady could hold back no longer. She came out herself to meet him, complaining: "The good-fortune cauldron's been up these several days and you've had none of it. You're no young man, and you can't wear yourself so. How many coppers do they pay you? Doesn't the opera say a man can beg leave and go home to his village? Then let's go home. The house doesn't want your bit of pay. Why go serving people in the deep of the twelfth month?"

His lips trembling, She Qingling said: "Mother, I'm home."

He would have knocked his head to his white-haired mother, but the old lady barked: "Let me see you dare kneel! Are you a fool?"

She flung aside the imperial cane she carried for show, came and caught her son: "The ground's cold, isn't it a fool's trick? Come, come, come, let's warm up indoors first."

And so he was hemmed into the room, set up on the kang, stripped of his outer robe, put into a lined jacket, his seat scalding hot beneath him, a thin quilt laid over him.

The crowd watched him drink down a bowl of sugar-water egg, and only then were they easy.

The old lady fell to complaining again: "It's for fear you'll find some business over the great festival. All those li with the cold wind down your neck, and look at those thin shoulders of yours, ai! These few days you eat with me. How would they know what you like?"

The old lady didn't know what her foster-son liked to eat either, but she had a born instinct, and held it sure that whatever she liked, her son must like.

She Qingling found his voice at last, and had scarce made to say something when the old lady leaned in with a mysterious face: "They tell me a corrupt official got clean away in the city today?"

She Qingling was blank a moment before he saw she meant Gui Rong. He nodded, and would have said yes, but the old lady, not waiting for his answer, fell to cursing: "They tell me this corrupt official bullied the men and forced the women out on the border, and cheated three chi of land from folk too?"

Gui Rong's crime was plotting rebellion. Bullying men and forcing women was no first-rank crime.

She Qingling would have spoken, but the old lady went on: "Aiyo, a man like that mustn't be let live, it's a great want of virtue! Son, which honest clear-sky lord has the court set to try him? I tell you, catch the man tomorrow and give the shameless thing ten strokes of the cane first. That sort's the most hateful. Son, your mother tells you, in our county in the old days there was just such a wicked man. Our house toiled a whole year and never ate one full meal, and taking the grain they'd kick our measure too, and not one kick, three at the least..."

She Qingling said no more, and knowing the old lady would give him no chance to speak, only propped a hand on the kang-table and watched his mother chatter, all smiles.

First-Moon carried in a great bundle, and the old lady took it and opened it like a treasure, and out came padded socks, a hand-muff, a lined jacket pieced of scraps of fur, undershirts and drawers.

She showed them to She Qingling one by one, and stroked his hair, aching over him: "My son's served their whole family a year, and what more do they want in the deep of the New Year? Is there no end to it?"

That said, she had Qi Qian'er put the things in the kang-chest, and went on saying whatever came to her: "Tomorrow, seems, they're doing Beating the Princess Drunk. I've had them raise you an awning tonight, and tomorrow you'll come watch the opera with your mother..."

Something came to her, and she climbed to the top of the kang-chest and took down a many-tiered mother-of-pearl box, and opened it tier by tier. In it were all the little snacks she'd scavenged and hoarded from everywhere, just now set solemnly atop the chest.

Opened, the smells ran together. There were broken fried noodle-twists, fried broad-beans, one-bite crisps, hundred-fruit cakes, red-bean sweets, packed so tight there was not a crack between them, and not one whole piece among them.

The old lady scooped a bit of each and put it in her son's hand: "Eat, eat, eat, it's good."

She Qingling took it, and cupped in both hands, ate as it came.