Chapter 94

People live different lives, so they see things in different ways. The Dowager Jiang had never once been her own master in her whole life. But when she sized up Guard Lane as if it were the inner palace, the old woman showed real insight.

She said to Qi Qian'er, "...I keep a vegetarian fast and say my prayers to the Buddha. By rights I shouldn't lightly break up another's marriage and spoil my own cultivation. But your house is different." The old dowager took Qi Qian'er's hand and patted it earnestly a few times. "Amitabha. Your granny and I have grown used to each other now. She's a guileless soul, and she's dragged you through no end of hardship. It hasn't been easy, young as you are."

She smoothed down a few loose strands of Qi Qian'er's hair and went on. "I've long heard your granny talk about these boys. They're all good, honest sorts. Never mind that the Chai girls are marrying into the Earl of Chang's house, our boys are still better matches than any of their sons. Ours are already on the road to office, and that alone puts them half a rank above sons of any other house.

"You mentioned the Shaoshang Chang, and I knew at once who you meant. A plain, quiet house that climbed up by its brother-in-law connections. I'm not saying their people are bad, I wouldn't dare speak ill of them. But when sisters born of one mother marry brothers of one house, you'd see nothing wrong for a day or two. Given time, though, their own blood will surely draw close together. It's not their closeness we need fear. It's that a whole good family's life would end up split down the middle and lived out in two halves. Why do that?"

The old dowager spoke with plenty held back in reserve. Qi Qian'er understood at once and bent her head to think it over. Beside her, Old Madam Chen spoke up. "That's the reasoning of it. Your Granny Jiang's not wrong in a single word. By then they'll be one family, and what will you count for?"

The old lady clapped her hands apart. "The hen flies off and the egg breaks!"

"Pfft!"

They all laughed together, and Qi Qian'er laughed too. "You're right, elder. Only I've already agreed to them today. I was thinking, when Scabby and the brothers first came to Yanjing, the old Earl and his son gave us no small help at court. What were we back then? They never once looked down on our low gate. A person should remember another's kindness. When their old lady came and begged me so, how could I refuse her?"

The old lady nodded again and again. "Just so. Our Qian'er has the best conscience of anyone. Whatever kindness she's given, she pays back tenfold, a hundredfold."

The Dowager Jiang smiled and touched a finger to Qi Qian'er's brow. "Shame on you. Out in the world you've got a fierce name, and here we ought to let those outsiders come see this soft-headed side of you. Refuse them? We'll do no such thing."

Now what did that mean?

The old lady and Qi Qian'er both looked at the Dowager Jiang, but she just kept turning Qi Qian'er's two hands over and over, feeling the old calluses in her palms. She thought of how her old sister was forever saying this child ground flour with her own hands to feed her and her foster-father. Who doesn't love a dutiful child?

Her own foolish son had a whole palace of consorts, and the needlework they sent her was wondrous stitch by stitch. But was fine needlework a consort's real worth?

She'd been a noble concubine herself once. She, for one, would do no needlework for that undying old wretch. She wouldn't even light him a single stick of incense before the Buddha.

What's more, given all the old grudges between She Qingling and the Zheng house, the Dowager Jiang naturally stood on She Qingling's side. That was why she and Old Madam Chen got on so well.

Qi Qian'er was taken aback. "Agreed?"

The Dowager Jiang nodded. "Yes, agreed! Gladly, sincerely, with all the fanfare you like, agreed. Afterward you can go and ask for their young ladies' birth-characters. Like I said, it's not that the Chai girls are bad, only they shouldn't all be sent into the one house. So we agree to one, and for the rest, you go find some Daoist cloister or temple with a master of great name to read the characters, and have her say in the end they don't match. It'll grieve us, there's no help for it, and both houses can carry on as before. People will always wag their tongues about something. You needn't hand them your own face to wag it over."

It could be done like that?

Qi Qian'er blinked. "But what if the characters do match?"

The Dowager Jiang laughed at that, and with a doting, honeyed way of coaxing a child said, "Little silly, the girls' birth-characters are fixed. But those boys of ours, which one even knows his own birth hour? Just ask the abbess of Qingque Nunnery in private, have her pick hours that are bound to clash, and report those. Then no matter who it is, no one can lay it at our door. Isn't that so?"

At her words Qi Qian'er went soft to the bone. She thought, no wonder this woman is steeped in the inner palace. At her age, when she sets out to coax you, heh, your very bones go soft.

Qi Qian'er was won over, heart and soul. "That's the reasoning of it. I've learned something. Thank you, Granny."

She played the darling a little too.

The Dowager Jiang laughed to hear it and pulled her into her arms. "My child, how old are you? Young as you are, you're already carrying the living of a whole house with several branches. That puts you a hundred times past most people. There's no hurry. Learn slowly and it'll come to you. In this life, the thing most to fear is being too hard on yourself. Don't go thinking your own shoulders can bear anything. Heh, in the end you'll just raise everyone around you to think of you as the hard one, the one who takes the loss first when trouble comes, and never think twice about it..."

Her waist must have ached, because the old woman took Qi Qian'er's hand and stood up. "This wind's pleasant, and I don't often come down the hill. We're like mother and daughter, like sisters. Shall we take a wander about?"

Qi Qian'er said yes, and helped the Dowager Jiang out, and Siyue helped the old lady behind.

As they went out, the old lady, for once, said something with real sense in it. "Qian'er, learn all you can from your Granny Jiang. I'm a woman of short sight, I don't know a single character, and I can't really teach you anything."

The Dowager Jiang turned and gave her a sidelong smile. "That you've come to see it now is progress. So my days of teaching you weren't wasted after all."

When this old dowager spoke, her gentle, water-soft nobility was like a living Bodhisattva who loves all the world.

The whole group went out talking and laughing, and along the back lane wandered idly over toward the chessboard court.

The Dowager Jiang said as she walked, "I knew someone once. Her temper, her backbone, she could have propped up the sky itself. She lived half a lifetime and never once bent, not for a single day..."

Qi Qian'er understood in a flash that the old dowager spoke of the Zheng dowager in the palace. Her heart shook, but she could only smile and answer, "Is that so?"

"It is. Back when I was at my old home, my luck turned and I met a master of the Way. That master's arts couldn't move mountains or turn the seas, but she was better than anyone at comforting the heart. Whatever bitterness was eating at you, just talk with her, and it would all lift.

"I remember the master said, in this human world, man or woman, some bitterness is bound to come. Twenty has the troubles of twenty, thirty of thirty. A daughter has a daughter's troubles, a wife a wife's. Whether you're a son or a father, some hardships are the same. But when those hardships come, you mustn't be too hard. Let all your kin round you have their say. It's not one person's affair, is it?"

Qi Qian'er nodded, and the Dowager Jiang patted her hand and said it again: "Don't raise them all to bad habits and grieve yourself to death for it."

Qi Qian'er let go of her arm, made her courtesy, and said yes.

Qi Qian'er was so biddable that the Dowager Jiang loved teaching her all the more. "My child, mind this well. You must learn to bear things. Even if you're alone and forlorn with no one to help, don't be hard on yourself. You're pitiable enough already, all on your own. Would you bully yourself besides? Let the trouble happen. Don't rage, don't hate. The trouble's just there, and you can't solve it by ramming your head through it in hatred. You won't die of it. We'll go slow, and one day it won't matter anymore..."

The Dowager Jiang stopped at the mouth of the lane, looked left and right, and suddenly reached out and clutched at the empty air, laughing in a strange way. "You must learn to be like the vine that winds round the tree, the softness that winds round a finger. One day, when she can't be hard anymore, it'll fall to you to wind round and round and choke... her to death!"

That said, she blinked at Qi Qian'er. "Remembered it?"

Qi Qian'er smiled and made her courtesy again. "Remembered it."

At that the old dowager patted the back of her hand. "Good child."

But as Qi Qian'er turned the old dowager's words over in her heart, she didn't take it all in, though she didn't think the old woman was wrong.

In fact, there was a saying among the folk later on, that the Zheng dowager in the palace had been iron all her life and yielded to no one. Yet after she died she was laid to rest at the Retired Emperor's left, and the whole court of ministers said this went against rite. But the Emperor had an answer for that too. He said, my mother never contended for anything her whole life. Can't her son contend even for a coffin's place on her behalf? And so the old dowager's coffin was set down at her husband's right.

But was that truly right? She was wronged her whole life long, and once you're dead, you're dead. It's all over, and none of it matters to her anymore.

Never mind. Someone who's been through it all may as well humor an old woman's fancy.

The company hedged the two old ladies round Quanhou Manor, and toured the grandmother-shrine, the Dragon King temple, and even the mountain-god shrine on the hillside, of these few streets.

The Dowager Jiang was devout. She saw the temple tiles had fallen in, and gave money for a new roof. She saw the Dragon King's gilding had flaked off, and gave money to regild it. She found the mountain-god shrine lacking in everything, and with a wave of her hand gave money for a whole new shrine.

She didn't know herself why she'd been lucky enough to bear an emperor, so she didn't dare pass any temple by, and didn't dare slight any god along any road.

Qi Qian'er saw the two elders well looked after, went home, and lay on the kang until the last watch of the night. Then she quietly changed her clothes, slipped out the window, and bounded off to the old place below Baiquan Mountain.

And below Baiquan Mountain, Xin Bo had long since lit a bonfire and was roasting a leg of lamb.

Deep in the night the smell carried far, and Qi Qian'er caught it from a distance.

She landed and stepped out of the dark, smiling at Xin Bo. "Oh, working up a fine appetite tonight, elder?" She sat down and went on teasing. "So you're done cultivating immortality for the day, and willing to come out and see me?"

Xin Bo was an easy sort, and long past his shame. Hearing her jeer, he laughed. "Done long since. With a true immortal like the Lady in the world, why should this old man burn incense afar?"

That said, he lifted an ox-ear knife and cut a strip from where the lamb-leg ran fragrant with dripping fat, and passed it to her.

Qi Qian'er stood on no ceremony. She took off her mask, took the knife, and ate the meat straight off the point of the blade. She'd been eating a while when she noticed Xin Bo's eyes on her were strange. She lifted her face, her mouth greasy, and asked, "What are you looking at me for?"

Xin Bo was disbelieving even now. Hearing her ask, he shook his head, smiling. "Who'd have thought the Elm-Tree Lady of Baiquan Mountain, known through all the world, should be an official's house's little household mistress of the back court!"

Qi Qian'er swallowed her meat and cut herself another strip. "What's wrong with being a household mistress? The wind can't reach me, the rain can't wet me, I wear light furs, live in a great house, and go about with servants in droves. Someone even shells my beans for me. However much trouble comes, it's all contained in one small courtyard. And this jianghu life, what's good in it? Either nothing happens, or something happens and it costs a life, and karma with it. Am I so stuffed full that I'd throw over a good life for that? So what did you really come to find me for tonight?"

Xin Bo smiled. "The Lady's hit it dead on. Something's happened, and there's a life and its karma in it."

He stood, turned to the great boulder behind him, and cleared away a heap of leaves and dead branches. Underneath stood twenty-odd great silver chests.

The sight of them set Qi Qian'er fretting. "I say, Xin Bo, you know I hate these things most of all."

Xin Bo nodded, opened a chest, took out a silver ingot and tossed it a few times. "I know it. But the jianghu's a hard place, and this old man can't shake free of it. Those outside all say only I can reach you. And we can't drag Wuhao and Wujiu, those two children, into it, so it falls to these old bones to run back and forth."

Xin Bo held silver just as cheap. If he'd prized it, why would he be an old beggar? He tossed the ingot back into the chest and came back to the fire. "Two matters. Spring's come, and though the Lady says she wants no tribute, a rule's a rule. If you take none, the rest look grasping for keeping theirs. The old hidden folk of the world have families to feed too, and if you keep doing as you do, won't it draw their hate? Our Qingfeng sits by Yanjing, a lively place, and the tribute there is no small sum, and no house dares cook its books. You said give it to the court instead, and that will do too. We sat down together and talked it over, and following your word from last year, handed the tribute to the Jiusi Hall. Then the capital had a thought, said you shouldn't be forever out of pocket, left you a share of it, and had me pass it on to you."

Qi Qian'er shook her head at once. "Money like that, stick even one wen of it back in your pocket and there's heaven-high trouble waiting behind it. Those lords at court, their old trick is the face-changing opera trick. What's the Jiusi Hall even for? To bring everyone under heaven into one hand. Believe me, whoever's once taken a share of the court's purse comes to no good end after. Send it back, quick. I'll not take it. My house doesn't lack a salary, and I've got a patent of rank on me!"

Xin Bo laughed aloud at that. Laughing done, he went on. "The second matter. Someone's brought down great trouble on himself, crossed Qin She, and would spend three hundred thousand strings to buy your shelter. His house wants to rent two mu on Baiquan Mountain and raise a little temple, and lodge a person there. Not lodge for nothing, either. Three hundred thousand strings the first time, and thirty thousand a year after. If the price doesn't please you, we can still hold out against them."

Qi Qian'er raised a hand, stuck the meat-knife into the lamb-leg, and looked at the flames a long while before she asked, "Who?"

Xin Bo sighed. "The reigning Founding Marquis, Grand Junior Tutor to the Crown Prince, who's soon to go to Jindian as a frontier governor, Tan Shouyi's eldest son, Tan Shiyuan."

Qi Qian'er went blank on the spot, with a feeling of the wheel come full round.

Of course she knew about Chen Dasheng and the others' affair. She just hadn't realized revenge was behind it all. The Chen house had lost lives to the Tan army.

Thinking of it, Qi Qian'er suddenly smiled, hugged her knees, and watched the fire. After a good while she asked, "It's that Tan Shiyuan of the Tan army?"

Xin Bo smiled bitterly. "Who else. This old man owed a great debt of kindness once, and now they use the kindness to press me into being go-between, and I couldn't refuse."

Qi Qian'er nodded. "So that's it. And just now you said Qin She? The Qin She who carves the steles on the back mountain?"

At that, Xin Bo said, with some feeling, "Lady, if you've time to spare, ask me more. This old man has nothing else to do, wanders the wall-gate all day, and I'm glad to teach you."

Qi Qian'er rolled her eyes. "And why should I have to learn?"

Xin Bo could only say, "Of all the houses under heaven, the one that stands with the North-South Guardian Temple is Qin She alone!"

At that Qi Qian'er nodded in sudden understanding. "Ah, I have it! So the Tan house, knowing Qin She was beaten at my hands, wants to borrow my forbidden-step stele to hide from Qin She. That's it?"

Xin Bo nodded. "Just so. Thirty thousand a year is a fair price too, but this old man knows you may not want it."

Qi Qian'er smiled. "Right. Of all the Tans in this world, this house is the most sickening one. Never mind not helping them, I won't hide it from you, if a Tan stood by the water's edge I'd have to stop myself from shoving him in! You know my roots. My house lost a good many lives to theirs!"

Just listen to the glee in her voice.

Xin Bo shook his head, much resigned. "Look at this old-hidden work you do, a whole year round and not a wen of good in it for you."

Qi Qian'er heard this and tossed her head, rather proud. "Am I so short of that melon-and-date pittance? Out with it, quick, how did the Tan cross Qin She?"

Xin Bo thought it over. "The doings of official houses run deep, and this old man isn't too clear on the particulars. What word we have is that the Tan father and son fought over power, and Tan Shouyi, hard-hearted as he is, packed his son Tan Shiyuan off to a temple to become a monk.

"This was last year. Tan Shiyuan's younger brother Tan Shize died, remember? He'd once had a sweetheart, Qin She's eldest young lady. She's since left the world to become a nun, though she goes by no dharma-name, just Qing Buyi, 'Love Unmoved'..."

Qi Qian'er cut in: "A fool for love, that one."

Xin Bo added a few sticks to the fire and smiled. "Heh, who under heaven isn't a fool somewhere? Everyone alive has their own fond folly. The old Tan house has bred strange seeds for generations. Tan Shiyuan, shut up in the temple, was of course unwilling to stay there. No telling what he was thinking, but he sent word to Qing Buyi and used Tan Shize's death as bait.

"Hmph! Qing Buyi saved him, and he turned around and tried to silence her for it. He got in touch with the old hidden folk of the medicine valley on Yuegong Mountain, and had her struck down with a soul-collecting brew and a sense-sealing blow. He likely never thought she'd escape. But she did, and came back and raised havoc in the Great Liang palace for days.

"What came after, the Lady knows too. She raged on, half mad, until Qin Zhuo came into the capital, and only then was it settled. That's how your forbidden-step stele came about. This old man is only running the errand and lending a hand today. I've passed the word along, and that's all I can do. If you won't help, what more can I do? Now this Qing Buyi hunts Tan Shiyuan the world over, and Qin Zhuo has fallen out with Yuegong Mountain. In all this, our Baiquan Mountain will not meddle."

Hearing it out, Qi Qian'er found it past belief too. She'd never dreamed that the trouble at home last year had its root here.

She stirred the fire with a stick a few times and murmured, "What do you call this? One evil grinding down another? No wonder the fighting ring at Qingfeng has been quiet since the first month, and Yuegong Mountain hasn't come to make mischief."

But Xin Bo shook his head slightly. "Hard to say. These last two generations of Qin She are only middling. I mean no slight to Qin Zhuo, but you can read a man's future by his temper, and Qin She has no strength to carry things forward. And Qing Buyi is a fool for love. Yuegong Mountain has the numbers in the end, and who wins isn't plain yet. The grudge between our Baiquan Mountain and them will come to a head sooner or later."

Qi Qian'er nodded and stood, and stretched. "Let it come, and let them. You've had the trouble of settling these two matters. We'll touch neither side. But this Tan house, I'll have to add a little firewood under them."

Xin Bo stood too, and asked, "And how does the Lady mean to add firewood?"

Qi Qian'er looked down the hill. "This news of yours, does the court know it?"

Xin Bo was a little blank, and thought, "Which news? The Tan's?"

Qi Qian'er shook her head. "The business of Qing Buyi raising havoc in the Great Liang palace."

Xin Bo shook his head. "Of course the court doesn't know. Never mind the Jiusi Hall looking fine on the face, for a source of news it's still our beggars' gate. Your meaning? You'd have the court know this?"

Qi Qian'er nodded. "Yes! Do those great lords draw a salary for nothing? Besides, this is the great crime of alarming the imperial presence! That great New Year's fight of mine can't have been for nothing, can it?"

Xin Bo nodded, smiling. "All right, I'll leak some word to Wuhao and them by and by, and count it a ladder to the clouds for our own people. Is the choice fitting, do you think?"

Qi Qian'er smiled. "None more fitting..."

Qingming early, Guyu late, and around the spring rains the sowing-time. Melons sown first, beans after, the rain wetting all in silence and the sparrow-sprouts coming.

In a blink Guyu was past and Lixia just come, and the whole street of Yanjing folk got their before-the-rain tea.

It was another morning like any other. The inner city's east market had just opened. The shops along the street had just taken down their shutters, goods not yet out on the counters, when a great burst of screaming and cries for help rose from the flower-street next over.

A curious shopkeeper, hugging his shutter-board and looking this way and that, hadn't watched long before a huge flesh-maggot rolled out of a little lane.

The maggot was fat and huge. When it rolled up to the shop doors and the shopkeepers, hidden behind their doors, could see it clearly, it turned out to be a strange person. Above, he wore a white silk undershirt. Below, he was wrapped in a woman's petticoat.

This person was a mountain of flesh, his belly like Maitreya's. His face was all blood, his look one of terror. He staggered along, crying for help without stop, his voice cracked hoarse from it. Now they could see him clearly: a fat monk with two plain ordination-scars on his crown.

The one dot on the crown is called clear-heart, had in the first year of orders. The two dots are joy-and-fortune.

Plainly a new monk. No telling why he was so faithless to his vows. Having left the world behind, how had he dared sleep last night in a flower-tower?

The shopkeepers put their shutters back up quick. They saw the monk all bloody and dared not stir, but held their doors fast and watched in secret as he dripped blood the whole way, crying for help and slapping at door after door.

They were all peaceable tradesmen after their own profit. Who'd dare meddle with him? From a distance you'd think his nose was only broken. But put your eye to the door-crack and you'd be frightened to death, for the fat monk's nose had been sliced clean off.

No one opened a door, no one dared lend a hand, and the blood ran more and more, until the monk fell at last in the middle of the street. When he was down, a shopkeeper close by finally saw clearly that the five fingers of the monk's left hand were gone too. Those were old wounds, and the stumps didn't bleed when he fell. Only the fresh scar where his nose had been still bled.

From far off came the shouts of the street-patrol runners. The households had only just let out a breath when a white-robed nun leapt down from the rooftops into the street. Sword in hand, she walked straight up to the monk and said with a cold smile, "Tan Shiyuan, I know you can hear me. Go back and heal your wounds well. This is the sixth sword. When you're better, find another place to hide. In three days this humble nun will come seek you out again..."

With that, the nun leapt backward away. By the time the patrol runners ran up, all they heard was the fat monk wailing, "Father! Save me! Save me..."