Chapter 88

It was the fifteenth of the first month, and the whole world kept the festival. But outside the Chen family's wing the ground was thick with kneeling Zheng-house servants. This crowd had come the night before. They knelt and asked She Qingling to come to the Duke Zheng's residence. No one came out, and still they would not rise.

More and more gathered, and by the grey of dawn they knelt out into the lane. The old lady in the old house heard of it. She threw on clothes without combing her hair, bound a kerchief round it, and had herself carried over to keep her foster-son company.

At first light the last ash of the incense-stick in the great lacquer Buddha's-hand vase fell slowly away. She Qingling set down the sutra in his hand and reached to take up another.

The old lady had been silent all this while, but she could hold back no longer. She said, "Son, I'd say this is them leaning on you."

She Qingling's hand checked over the sutra. His face showed no great anger. He was long used to it.

A thing like this happened to him a few times a year. Either the old lady over there was dying, or the old master was dying. In the palace he could dodge it well enough, with the Emperor there in front of him. But now he was outside the palace.

This family was putting on a show for all the world to see.

There was no telling who'd leaked word that he was here.

She Qingling took up a stick of aloeswood and lit it at the candle. He asked the old lady with a smile, "So you see it too?"

The old lady's beads stopped in her fingers. She nodded. "Mm, how would I not? Your mother's no fool. The country's not so different from the city. We had such a thing in our parts once too. An in-law house, whose daughter died in childbed, and they took back by force the few mu of land they'd sent her in dowry. The little grandson's kin said, at least there's still the little grandson, don't be so hard. But the family said it well: my eyeballs are gone, what do I want with eyelids? And no one could say more to that.

"They never thought, most like, that the little grandson would grow up too. After, the family's grandson made good. He passed the child examinations in the county and married into a rich house. Then his mother's kin were sorry, and sent no end of go-betweens to make peace. It's no rare thing, this. They're leaning on you. They want you to show your face, so they'll have a story to tell the world after."

She Qingling knew the reasoning of it well enough. He slid the new incense in slowly and asked his foster-mother in earnest, "Then by my foster-mother's meaning?"

What should I do?

She Qingling was a marvel at statecraft, but at household squabbles he was no hand, and could only dodge them stiffly.

The old lady didn't much understand how rich houses settled their affairs either, but she had experience. She thought a while and said, "There's this. A heart can be a bad thing at times, judging everyone by its own inside. If that grandson had stayed poor, his kin would be easier on him. But he had to go and make good..."

Here the old lady looked out at the courtyard with scorn and spat once, silent, all contempt in her face.

She Qingling held back a laugh. He drew a bolster from a pile and put it behind the old lady's back to coax her. "Mother, this small thing of mine is no matter. Go back and rest. When you wake, most like it'll all be over. I'm well used to it."

But the old lady refused his kindness. She wouldn't lean back, but sat up straight and said, "Over? It's never over! Those great houses are full of guile, and foul with it. So many eyes, so many mouths, and after, you couldn't explain it clear with eight mouths of your own. It's setting you on the fire to roast, hmph! Either you hang up there in the wrong for no fault, or they do. If I had my say...

"Son, if it doesn't sit well with you, we won't go! Only that side, however you name it, is an elder. Before, whatever you did, no one could fault you. But now, told to the world, there's a death lying between you. They want you to come and see them alone, so that after, when they twist the tale, you've no witness. Understand? Right now they're holding their breath to give the family a way down. And if you'll not give them that way down..."

With that the old lady pointed outside and blinked at her foster-son.

She Qingling thought it over, and in the end nodded, and said with a laugh of agreement, "My foster-mother has the right of it. Then let it be so."

He was truly sick of it.

"Good, I'll send someone to wake Qian'er." The old lady was glad to see him willing. "You, you're in your own house now, what are you hiding your face for? Make your daughter-in-law keep out of it? With the folk kneeling in layers out there, could she keep out of it?"

On the night of the fourteenth, the Duke Zheng's chief steward had come to the house. He said the old master was dying, and he had to see She Qingling no matter what.

She Qingling of course had no wish to see him. That side sent people in batch after batch, and in the end even Zheng Aman came.

Now all Quanhou Street knew the Duke Zheng's old master was dying, and must see his grandson before he breathed his last, or die with his eyes unclosed.

The threads of grudge between the Zheng house and She Qingling were many, but the one the world most reviled was the maternal house driving its granddaughters to death. For that very thing the Emperor had raged, and would not make his own titular grandfather Duke Zheng, but made his uncle Zheng Xingyun duke instead.

Whose notion that driving-to-death had been, no one to this day knew. Some said Zheng Xingyun's, some the old lady's, and more said the old master's.

The old master owned it and took the whole blame on himself alone. From the day She Qingling entered the palace as Seal-Holding Eunuch, he'd made a courtyard of his own house into a Daoist retreat, shut his gate, and taken to cultivation.

In two years, no more and no less, the Zheng house had come at last to see a thing or two. To be a famous minister and to be a maternal in-law were two different matters. A maternal in-law must widen his ties and knit his marriage-kin close to keep his wealth. While Dowager Zheng lived it was well enough, but Dowager Zheng was on in years now, and how many more days could she shelter the Zheng?

So whatever it took, they meant to take up kinship again with She Qingling, the man people called the hidden chancellor.

The Zheng came asking with all their shamelessness. But they never once dreamed that the fair, clear-hearted She Qingling would play so shameless a stroke too, and send his foster-son and his daughter-in-law to the Zheng house in his place.

When the two had got into the Zheng carriage, Zheng Aman looked at the plain-clad Chen Dasheng and his wife with an odd face and asked, rather alarmed, "You, you're truly coming?"

Chen Dasheng heard it and laughed for anger. "Ah! Coming! Your house's forebear's dying, and we can't come? There's a whole lane kneeling..."

Qi Qian'er lazily covered her mouth with her sleeve and gave a little yawn. Not that she was sleepy. It was her heart that was weary.

The Duke Zheng's house had sent people to her home in wave on wave, and it had brought gawkers out all over Quanhou Street.

She minded her face very much, and had a bellyful of pent-up spleen.

Chen Dasheng, a little guilty, quickly set up the folding travel-table, drew up the charcoal, and took up the little brass pot to boil his wife tea. His hands were busy and his mouth was coaxing. "Aiyo, aiyo! My wife's put to trouble."

Qi Qian'er pressed her lips, held back another yawn, and looked at Zheng Aman across the way with tears at the corners of her eyes. "I'm not tired. It's the little duke I think is tired."

Zheng Aman had passed the whole first month worn out. He saw Chen Dasheng set out the cups and begged, "Brother Feilian, boil me a strong cup too." With that, those fine brows and fine eyes, that always held a thousand graces, shut clean to.

Chen Dasheng knew his hard case and took out another cup. "Aman? Taken more grief at home again?"

Zheng Aman nodded without opening his eyes. "It's not grief, quite. You know how I am. I didn't want to come either, only I feared they'd say those weary words over and over, and I can't do as I do out in the world, and dodge what I can't stomach and daren't cross... That's my mother. Never mind!"

He'd not speak ill of his elders, and said but the half, and shut his eyes clean. His heart ached as if wrung, the words he couldn't stomach going round and round in his ears.

"I know you bear us a grudge in your heart..."

"I know you can never let the old business go..."

"Why bring that up again, it's all past, there's no point raising it now..."

"Aren't you doing well enough?"

"Without our bearing the pain and giving you up back then, where would your Emperor's favor have come from? A man can't be without conscience!"

"We're all one family. What the elders did then was for your good too... Who has eyes in the back of his head, to have foreseen so hard a thing..."

Wronged at heart, most like, his fine eye-slits let the tears seem about to run. But in the instant they'd have fallen, a hand caught his.

Chen Dasheng put a hot cup of water into Zheng Aman's hand and coaxed him. "Ai, ai, none of that! It's the fifteenth of the first month today, you mustn't cry. Cry today and you'll be wretched a whole year."

The boy was good. Every time it was the Zheng forcing him forward, but whether he came into the palace or even came to the house, he'd never say one word to trouble a soul. He came, and stood silent to one side.

It had been so cold yesterday, the deep of winter, and the boy had stood out a whole night. Ashamed to trouble anyone, he'd wrapped himself in his cloak and stood in the lee of the wind.

Qi Qian'er saw the boy was so good-looking, and his hard, pent misery was all on his face, and she found him the more to be pitied. She'd an old woman's heart, and always had a shade more forbearance for a handsome child.

So she coaxed him. "There, bear it a while. Elders have their hard cases, and juniors their troubles too. It'll be better once you've a household of your own to split off to."

At that Zheng Aman looked at Qi Qian'er with grateful eyes and smiled bitterly. "Sister-in-law doesn't know how it stands at home, it's a hard business. Never mind the several branches of brothers, even splitting off begins with the collateral lines. Even if we truly split, it won't fall to me." He sighed again. "Whoever goes, I can't go."

Chen Dasheng said in earnest, "Just look, those few reading with the princes lately, they're forever kicking up some trouble, and the Emperor's storing it up for them this first month. Sooner or later he'll come for them. You'd best go to the front and seek out Little Flower. The Emperor means to use you, and who'd dare stop you? They can't come ten thousand li to bully you again..."

Zheng Aman laughed. "What are you saying, Brother Feilian? This can't be called bullying."

It was only pent misery.

But Chen Dasheng said to him in earnest, "It is bullying. I tell you, retreat into the river and it's no use. Some folk love to seize the biddable one and abuse him..."

Before Qi Qian'er, Chen Dasheng had always been a dull, undecided lump. But since when had he learned to counsel people?

Qi Qian'er watched, amused, and a smile came to her face unawares. She thought only, the fool's come along after all.

Chen Dasheng was counselling away smoothly when he felt his ear itch. He turned, puzzled, and couldn't read his wife's look. "Wife, what do you look at me so for?"

Qi Qian'er smiled. "You've taught him rightly, only it's all too late to say now. The old master over there's about to die, and one mourning is three years. His father's Minister of the Board of Rites, so the rites must be the heavier, and however would he get away... What, why do you both look like that? Have I said a wrong thing?"

She'd found of a sudden that Chen Dasheng's and Zheng Aman's faces were going stranger and stranger.

Zheng Aman drew a long breath, and at last smiled bitterly, bent his head and drank off his tea, and wiped the water from his lips with his sleeve. "I'll not hide it from you, sister-in-law. I rather think our house's old master could, could live ten thousand years yet..."

With that Zheng Aman turned his head aside, and heard someone beside him begin to snort with laughter, and the laughing grew louder and louder.

Chen Dasheng couldn't well laugh at another's elder before Zheng Aman, and could only hold it in. When Qi Qian'er had done laughing he said, "Wife, you don't know. In last year alone the old lady of that house broke her arm twice, and fell no end of times... Whenever our father's at leisure, that side must have a court physician sent to look at her. The old master's been waiting to breathe his last, and counting today, it's the fourth time. Before, when our father didn't go out, he didn't go out, and they daren't make a stir before the Emperor, and the Emperor made as if he knew nothing... This time, there's no telling where they got the word, and our father's scarce out for a few days' ease, and, ai... What a business!"

Zheng Aman was ashamed at it, and could only bow his head and look at the cup in his hand.

Qi Qian'er knew the matter between her father and the Zheng. Done laughing, she wiped the tears from her eye-corners and sighed. "So that's how it is. I always took it that we country folk were the thick-skinned ones..."

"Aiyo, wife, spare your sharp tongue, there's a Zheng before you."

Chen Dasheng, half laughing and half not, quickly stopped her. Qi Qian'er, helpless, put away her hard words and sat thinking. The fine days the house had now were all by their father's shelter above.

He was her own house's father, so she'd not have him wronged. Her feeling for Scabby ran just as deep, no deeper, and she'd feeling for her father too.

And besides, in the deep of the first month, to plague folk so, all of them running to the house in the dead of night to wail a mourning, what did it mean? Just that they'd seen her family do well?

The long and short of it was this: on the strength of the elder's name, they were forcing their father to come and eat humble pie in person. Pah! A base scheme.

If a man had no face, then there was no need to give him one.

The three rode a while, each with his own thoughts. When Yanjing's east gate came near, Qi Qian'er said of a sudden to Zheng Aman, "I say, little brother, in a while think of some reason and slip off, eh?"

Zheng Aman was blank. "Slip off?"

Qi Qian'er nodded, a little flame lighting in her eyes. "Mm, get down early, and let on you know nothing. Else when I light my fire in a moment and it singes you, your brother will lay it at my door..."

At that a jolt went through Chen Dasheng's heart, and the little teapot dropped from his hand to the table, its spout knocked clean off.

On the fifteenth of the first month, the Duke Zheng's old lady, Yan-shi, could neither sit nor lie easy on her couch.

Since morning she'd sent people again and again to watch at the gate, and asked the kitchen several times whether the few dishes her grandson liked were being kept hot.

That done, she'd asked the daughters-in-law several times more: could her grandson come today? Was the courtyard they'd long made ready in order? Were the old things her grandson loved best set out?

They all said he could come, but she was uneasy still.

This was an old lady of no great ability. Forebear of a ducal house or not, people really aren't all alike.

Born into a house of iron rule, she'd been a weak thing from birth. At home she obeyed her parents. Married, she dared not cross her husband, and let her mother-in-law stuff his courtyard with women. Her husband in his young days loved the flowers and the swallows too, and so the Zheng grew into a great and thriving clan.

Having no ability herself, she suffered everywhere. Her husband kept her down all her life, and she barely spent a few days in charge of even the household inside. It wasn't that they never let her run it. She just didn't have it in her.

A mother who can't stand tall drags her children to an early wisdom. So the children she raised were every one hard of temper, and from small would decide things for their mother. Since someone else would decide, she handed everything over to the children early on and let them have their way.

Above all her eldest daughter, Dowager Zheng, harder than any, who in a whole life bore no child of her own body, yet sat firm in the seat of Dowager in the Great Liang palace.

The old lady had a true-born daughter who'd made good, a son who was a duke, grandsons with futures, and was soft as ever. A temper once set is a hard thing to change.

Take that business of the granddaughters. The most the old lady did was tell the old master, I'll never speak to you again.

And after, she truly never spoke to the old master. When the old master came to her room and smashed everything in it, and not once only, she bore it and said nothing, for that old thing dared do no more.

Even when she knew, she had no will of her own. The most she would do was cry till her eyes swelled and refuse to eat.

But let her son come before her with a hard face, and she was well again, and could bear still more.

Now the house was off to plague the grandson again.

Yan-shi knew it was wrong, but she'd not resist. She could only sit and lie ill at ease, guilty at heart, making sure over and over, and having made sure, wretched again, choked past bearing. At last she asked her sister-in-law, in a tone half of consulting, "Say, that child... if he, if he doesn't want to come, then let it be. Don't, don't press him."

Her sister-in-law had envied her a whole life and scorned her at heart, yet hadn't her luck, and couldn't cross her. She could only swallow the choke of it, and, hating her fussing, said with a thread of grudge, "We sent people last night! It's too late for you to say this now, sister!"

Then why do it at all?

Hearing the barb in the words, Yan-shi shrank at once, pressed her lips, and would have wept. She'd scarce drawn her kerchief when her sister-in-law sprang up. "Sister, give me leave a moment, I... I'll just go and change."

With that her sister-in-law waited not for her tears to fall, but took an arm and went quick out, for she couldn't cross her. In the end the most pitiable in the world was Yan-shi, the most helpless was Yan-shi, and all the rest were the black-hearted, rotten-gutted villains.

The old lady went out in a hurry, and, not seeing what was outside the door, ran into someone coming the other way.

The other woman was well on in years too, and had the breath knocked from her. When she'd steadied herself she kept patting her chest and crying alarm.

The woman at her side saw the newcomer was a gate-servant, put out a hand, and slapped her hard, scolding, "Blind your dog's eyes! Where are your manners..."

But before she'd done throwing her weight about, the servant shuffled forward on her knees, held her face, and said to the roomful of great ladies, "Ancestor, madams, go quick and look at the gate! No..." She'd have said no good, but feared the bad word in the New Year, and pointed toward the gate in alarm. "Just, just go quick and look!"

And so the whole house of great ladies, save the timid old lady, were carried and helped in a great hurry to the gate.

Heh! Today was lively indeed.

On the fifteenth of the first month, a crowd of onlookers stood packed around the Duke Zheng's residence, ring upon ring. The Zheng had sent the Chen house word that the old master was breathing his last, but the great gate had red lanterns hung out for the season.

Besides the red lanterns, at the gate waited seven or eight of the Zheng's more presentable young men at the least, and a dozen and more stewards, and the presentable women of every branch, all waiting for She Qingling to come, so they might ring round him and bundle him into the house.

They were kin, after all, and bone broken still holds by the sinew. Once the man was in, it was out of his hands. They'd coax him, set him before the living Buddha, weep and wail, do away with a scapegoat or two, and the thing would be over.

The Zheng masters had planned it well, but never dreamed that at the great gate would come, of a sudden, a real mourner.

Qi Qian'er came with a band of hired wailing-women, herself in hemp mourning-robe and hemp mourning-kerchief, and every rite a grandson owed she'd got on herself.

Never mind it was the fifteenth of the first month. When King Yama wants a life, he doesn't care whether it's a festival or not, and the coffin-shops of great Yanjing don't shut their doors!

The place found, the carriage turned to it, and everything was to hand, for at a good price there are those who'll take the mourning-wail trade.

Chen Dasheng was truly mortified, and couldn't cross her. He could only, face wooden, take a fistful of spirit-money from the basket on his man's arm and fling it up toward the Duke Zheng's residence.

And as the spirit-money came scattering down out of the sky, Qi Qian'er threw herself to the ground, and, bringing her true skill to bear, set up her wail:

"Oh, my own... my dear one! Poor short-fated soul! You'll eat nothing more, you'll wear nothing more, and the whole world keeping the great New Year, and you up and died on me, aiya, my grandfather... how could you go and die on the fifteenth of the first month, my grandfather..."