Chapter 98

A few days after the murder at the Wu family's old ink shop in Yanjing, all Guard Lane knew of it.

Past noon, Qi Qian'er ate in her own court, then went strolling with Siyue to the old lady's. She walked in and found the eldest cousin's wife Li-shi, the second's wife Kou-shi, and the third's wife Luo-shi keeping the old lady company.

Funny to tell, the wives sat in a strange way, pressed flat against the wall like griddle-cakes, keeping well back.

Out in the court Qi Qian'er had already heard a name, Ge Sansu. So she smiled and said: "Oh, this Yanjing business? You've all heard of it too."

Never mind that it happened right under the Son of Heaven's own feet. A brother poisoning his own widowed sister's family of seven was the kind of thing that had always been rare, even in the old days.

When she asked, Li-shi and the others brightened. Even the old lady sat up and called out: "Qian'er, you've heard of it too?"

Qi Qian'er had caught a strange smell when she came in, and held her breath as she finally climbed onto the kang: "A thing this big, and Jixiang's wife chattered about it all morning. How would I not know?" She looked at Li-shi. "And who did you hear it from, sister?"

Li-shi smiled: "The Guo-Yang house. Their beast fell sick, and early this morning they came to my court to borrow a cart. I caught an earful there too. Their court is rented to a Board of Punishments lord, isn't it? At first I didn't believe it, but then I came here and found they all know it too. Tss, I tell you, this is a thing never heard of before. Right under the Son of Heaven's own feet, a brother wipes out his sister's whole house. Aiyo, is that even a man? I heard it and my teeth chattered."

The old lady found them long-winded and cut in impatiently: "Qian'er, is it true?"

Qi Qian'er nodded quickly: "It's true. And to tell it, the thing's tangled up with our house a little..."

Before she'd finished, the women in the room all cried out together.

The women looked alarmed, and Qi Qian'er added quickly: "Hai, remember the day it thundered?"

Li-shi nodded at once: "How could I not? Our granny was sure the Dragon King was snatching people, and there was no telling whose sin had brought it on. She was too scared to sleep alone, so I and third sister had to come and sit with her."

Li-shi and Luo-shi both thought of that night and twisted their faces.

The old lady looked a little ashamed. She slapped her granddaughter-in-law's leg and turned to Qi Qian'er: "Never mind that. Such great thunder, weren't you afraid? Just tell me what happened the night it thundered."

She had once stripped clothes off the dead, and the dread of it had grown into a sickness in her heart.

Qi Qian'er thought it over. Even she found it hard to believe. "This brother poisoning his sister's whole house happened that very night of the thunder. Your house's Scabby happened to be on watch in the streets. Just when the rain was fiercest, a girl rushed out of the back of the house where it happened and clasped our Guan Si'er's leg, crying for help. Then a crowd rushed out of the house and said the girl was mad, and tried to drag her back in..."

The old lady grew anxious and cut in: "Nonsense! Nonsense. A thing this great has happened, how could she be mad? She's not mad. There's a wrong here!"

Qi Qian'er nodded: "Just so. A wrong for the ages. Our few stubborn donkeys could tell, by the sound of it, that the girl's crying and calling for help was no ordinary crying. On the spot they kicked aside a few of the house-servants and rushed the room. But it was no use. The rest were dead, and past all dying!

"The girl's fate was good too. That night she never touched the soup her uncle's house sent. She gave it all to her wet-nurse instead. She saw the nurse fall, and crawled out through a dog-hole in the inner court to the back gate. When the gate-woman went to the privy, she ran out, and by chance met your eldest grandson."

The old lady held family and clan dear, and she asked, hardly daring to believe it: "This, a brother truly killed his own sister? Truly born of the same mother's milk?"

Qi Qian'er nodded: "Mm, truly. I asked Jixiang the same thing. Own kin, of one mother's milk."

The old lady slapped her leg: "But what for? What grudge so great?"

Yes, what grudge so great?

Qi Qian'er smiled coldly: "What for? Money. Run into that, and a man's no longer a man, and a ghost no longer a ghost..."

Ge Sansu's house had run the biggest ink-and-color shop in Yanjing, under an old brand, Xuanyu Studio. The scholars and men of taste of the old dynasty had loved to collect their wares most of all. It was said their colored inks came in ten hues, the tones so fine that nothing since had matched them. They'd even made vermilion tribute-ink for several generations running, and the house was well off.

The Ge trade was great, but for the sake of their materials the ink-works had always stayed at their old southern home. These past two years the soldiers' scourge came through, and Ge Sansu's father and several clan-brothers were lost in the south. Ge Sansu's mother had no choice. She gathered the family's wealth and took the children to shelter with her own elder brother.

The Ge family lost seven lives, but the Wu household, master to servant, high to low, all had a hand in it. With a murder this great, likely none of them would live.

When Qi Qian'er finished telling it, the old lady sat silent a good while, then said one thing: "Were it me, I'd have handed the recipe over. Once people are dead, there's no use in it. Your own brother and his wife, don't you know what they are? Ai... a muddle-headed mother too, in the end..."

Having said that, the old lady was much grieved. She leaned a good while on her beloved kang-cabinet before she steadied herself, and said at last: "Hai, a body must cherish its luck. If there's food, eat it. If there's drink, drink it. Else there's no telling who ends up profiting by it."

To show she was different, she gritted her teeth and fished a key up from her collar.

But the moment she pulled out the key, the granddaughters-in-law changed countenance, and each raised a kerchief to cover her nose and mouth.

The old lady smiled and made eyes at her granddaughters-in-law, a look that said what a great bargain you're about to get. She opened the cabinet and put her hand into that treasure-heap of hers.

She felt about and felt about, and fished out at last two packets of stale pastries that had been sitting there who knew how long, to share with the granddaughters-in-law. "You're all born to good fortune, every one of you, hmph! This is what comes of marrying into our old Chen house. Where's another house with such luck? Eat, eat! You've struck it rich now, see? These came the last time Scabby's dad sent some over, the very pastries the Emperor loves! Eat up, I tell you, they're wonderfully good!"

The granddaughters-in-law looked down at the rock-hard, mildewed pastries in their hands. Eating them was no good, and not eating them was no good either. In the end it was Qi Qian'er who knew how to play sweet. She spread out a kerchief, set the pastries on it, and wrapped them up as if they were precious. Holding them, she smiled: "It's Granny who loves me, keeping the good things for us. Granny, why so few? I can see you've got more, haven't you?"

Her eyes shone at the old lady, and the old lady at once put up her guard: "What, you take them and eat them and still it's never enough?"

Qi Qian'er laughed behind her hand: "Listen to you. These are pastries the Emperor eats. Tomorrow I'm holding a little tea-party in my court, and bringing these out would be a real show of face, wouldn't it? Granny, give me a few more..."

The old lady grew angrier: "You greedy child, never satisfied. I tell you, the Bodhisattva has said how many clothes a body wears and how much a body eats, it's all written down before birth. Eat up all the good things now, and you'll have none left for when you're old. I tell you, you mustn't be greedy. Do you hear?"

Qi Qian'er wouldn't hear it, and rolled along the edge of the kang to snatch the key. She'd long meant to clean out the old lady's kang-cabinet. Last month Erye had told her in secret that the old lady hides everything in there, pastries, fried things, fruit, even bowl after bowl of meat, and mixed together in that cabinet they stink. Worse, she secretly feeds them to little Xique and Lanting, and the children have had the runs for days on end.

These days the weather was close and hot. After a few rains the room drew damp again, and the old lady's room had grown past bearing, a sour-husk stench, nearly reeking like a privy.

And the old lady couldn't smell this stench at all. Last year she'd had a bout of chill and headache, and once she recovered she lost her sense of smell and couldn't smell anything at all.

No one else dared touch the old lady's cabinet. Only Qi Qian'er was bold enough to play the bandit, open it, and clean it out for her.

But you can't always go snatching a body's things to eat, so sometimes she had to wait till the old lady slept sound, then go in with the maids, clear the cabinet out, and stuff in odds and ends so that, in short, the cabinet stayed full.

Now Qi Qian'er saw the old lady's muddled way and wondered about it herself. In her last life the old lady had been so shrewd she knew to her death how many coppers lay in a corner of that cabinet. How had she come to this?

Grandmother and granddaughter "fought hard" a while, and in the end Qi Qian'er was shoved out with a shoe.

She hadn't stood in the court long when Li-shi and the others ran out looking wretched. They saw Qi Qian'er and begged her as if for rescue: "Ai! Qian'er, see to it, quick. The smell in that room is past bearing now. We'd burn more incense to smother it, but the old lady thinks it a waste of money. We can bear it, but Xique and Lanting are small. Keep tormenting the children like this and it'll take half their lives, believe it?"

Qi Qian'er had no choice. That night she burned a calming incense, and once the old lady was sound asleep, she went in with her people and carried the great kang-cabinet out to deal with it in the court.

It was not the first time. Now it took two or three goes a season, and with the weather turning hot, it would likely be every dozen days.

Once the cabinet was open, the smell was a marvel. Qi Qian'er held her nose and watched from a distance as the maids cleared out broken silver and scattered coppers. These were meant for the old lady to reward people with when she went out, but with her temper, handing over even one copper pained her to the heart.

Afraid Qi Qian'er would scold her for it, she'd take the money out, make a show of going somewhere, and then hide it away again.

Money was one thing. Money doesn't grow fur or drop litter. The real trouble was everything else: the old cotton socks the old lady couldn't bear to throw out, dried fruit filched from who knew whose feast-table, temple offering-fruit, bowl after bowl of meat-broth gone green with mold and boiled down to half, dripping rotten fruit and spoiled peaches, half a cabinet of pastries, and on top of it all a nest of mice, pink and sleeping curled up in the old lady's cotton socks.

Once these were thrown out, they had to be replaced with something close to what had been there, because the old lady, sharp-minded as she still was, could remember exactly which thing lay where. The order couldn't be muddled.

The old lady in her muddle didn't believe food and drink could rot. She thought that so long as a thing was hidden, it would keep ten thousand years.

When everything was stuffed back full for the old lady and the cabinet was carried back in, the whole court let out a breath.

They could live again.

Jixiang's wife loosened the kerchief at her nose and said carefully to Qi Qian'er: "Madam, I think the old lady's a bit off."

Qi Qian'er nodded. More than a bit off. Master Cheng had long since told the old lady to eat vegetarian and never touch greasy things again, but getting her to listen would be the real wonder.

Qi Qian'er, at a loss herself, counted up the ready money on hand and said to Jixiang's wife: "What if we move to Yanjing for a while and see the old lady mended? How's that?"

Jixiang's wife was of course willing, and nodded away: "That's best, that's best. The master is moving out of the palace next month too, and the family living together is the proper thing. Madam, shall I take people to tidy the old house tomorrow?"

But Qi Qian'er waved a hand: "We won't live at Foster-father's. It's heaven's law that a son serves his father. The more I think about it the angrier I get. Scabby ought to at least put in some effort and take some trouble himself. Why should we sweat at home serving the old and minding the young, while he's a lord in the capital and comes home a lord too..."

A lord? Chen Dasheng could not be a lord now.

The great rain-night battle had let Qing Buyi escape. From the next day Yanjing was sealed off for a day while they hunted her, with no result, and the Emperor, in a high fury, had every headman in charge that night beaten twenty strokes of the board.

And because Chen Dasheng had led a pack of brothers to drink mutton soup and watch the whole show from a roof, he took five strokes more.

There was no explaining to the Emperor now that it was Meng Dingchen who'd told them all to keep out, wanting the power to himself. Anyway the person escaped and it was your fault, so bear it, all of you.

Though it was his own people who wielded the board, twenty-five strokes left his backside all black and blue, and split open wherever it was going to split.

Chen Dasheng, nursing his sore rear, dared not stay in the palace, and could only recover at the new Guard garrison. He needed rest, but the garrison was in an uproar all the same, with people coming and going to use the chance to fawn on him and look in.

And there was another trouble now. On the rain night that uncovered the Wu poisoning, Chen Dasheng had summoned the Shuntian Prefecture to the scene as well.

Ge Sansu was the aggrieved party, and couldn't be locked up, and had to be settled somewhere safe.

The Shuntian Prefecture wouldn't take her in. She was in heavy mourning, and a whole family dead was thought somewhat unlucky, so she had nowhere to go.

The old sabers meant to see a good turn through to the end, so they minded none of that, and brought the girl back to the garrison. Now they waited for the examination to be finished and the court to sit.

The Long Saber garrison's new court was large and had rooms to spare. Guan Si'er, ever clever, even paid out of his own pocket for a matron to wait on the girl who'd ruined his purity.

That Ge Sansu came here for refuge was no matter. The hard part was that the Wu were Yanjing locals, their whole clan here.

The Wu had clan-kin and a clan-head here, and somehow, no telling how they'd schemed it, they meant to find Ge Sansu, beg for her mercy, and ask her to put in a good word so the old Wu line could keep a bloodline alive.

Heh! So it was said to the face. Who believed it? The Ge house was heirless now, and there was an heirless fortune.

This day was hot, and Chen Dasheng had himself carried behind a bamboo blind to watch the fun.

The Wu had some footing in Yanjing, and before three days were out, someone in the Six Boards worked a connection and came before Chen Dasheng to pass word. Let the guilty die as they deserved, they said, but this third young lady was the old Wu's sister's girl too, and they'd like to take her in and care for her, being close blood kin after all.

So long as Chen Dasheng agreed, the Wu were willing, to the tune of a hundred thousand strings.

Never mind that Chen Dasheng was no fool. Even Master She sent word out from the palace that the girl carried the fortunes of two great Yanjing ink-houses on her back. This lot talked fine, flesh-and-blood kin and all that, but the ones who poisoned her whole family had been flesh and blood too.

Take her out of the garrison, and before long word would come that she'd grieved herself sick pining for her kin and died, or that no one was watching and she'd hanged herself unguarded, and there would be nothing anyone could do.

The girl was already carrying a rage, waiting only for the chance to right her family's wrong. Send her off friendless into the wolves' den, and there'd be no need even for poison. Three or five cruel words would be enough to send her to her end.

Chen Dasheng wouldn't release her. So the Wu begged and pleaded with everyone they could and spent a great price to work the connection of Liu Daya's mother, meaning to see the girl one way or another.

Liu Daya had been flogged too, and couldn't come, so he sent a Wu woman with a letter.

Chen Dasheng took the letter behind the blind and read it through once, and didn't know what to say. Liu Daya wrote that the favor was an old debt his mother's people owed, and his mother wanted him to repay it. He couldn't be unfilial. And besides, his wife had already taken fifty thousand strings from the Wu, and he'd split that money with his brother.

As for the Wu wanting to see this Ge Sansu, well, this, this way...

Guan Si'er was a good child at heart, but ever since the day his purity was lost, he'd come to hate the girl. And the girl's fate was a hard one too. In nearly three days at the Long Saber garrison, she'd lived each day on a few grains of rice.

Big Brother had put it well: even if she died, she mustn't die on the old sabers' ground. Guan Si'er thought this made good sense, so he went early to the street-corner to buy the wicked girl some beancurd pudding.

The beancurd pudding at the street-corner was delicious. Guan Si'er could eat five bowls of it every time, and he thought this pudding might be something the woman would actually eat.

He ate his fill at the street-corner, bought two bowls more for her besides, and carried the food-box to the back. He hadn't gone a few steps when several brothers dragged him aside into a small room. They undid his hair and found a mute matron to do it up in a woman's coiffure, then stripped his clothes off and put a woman's skirt on him.

Guan Si'er of course wouldn't have it, and struggled hard, but then heard his brother Qingguan say: "Old Seven, be good. In a while you sit behind there and make no sound. If that woman talks for the time it takes one incense stick to burn, that's a hundred strings for you. If she talks for ten incense sticks, a thousand strings."

Guan Si'er didn't know what was afoot, but when he heard a thousand strings, he was willing.

He struggled no more. He sat still and let them work on him: changed into a woman's jacket and skirt, his hair done up in a woman's knot, a wind-band across his brow, his face powdered white.

Once he was set to rights, a few brothers carried him to the wicked woman's room and laid him in her very bed, under her very covers.

Ge Sansu hadn't been gone long. Lying there, Guan Si'er caught a strange smell, that scent that comes of a woman, slowly filling his nose, and his wits went floating, his heart astray.

Once he was settled, to the perfumed bed came a scrawny, sharp-faced old man. The old man grinned at Guan Si'er, and when he opened his mouth the voice was soft as a woman's. "Officer, begging your pardon."

With that, the old fellow hopped behind the bed and crouched by the chamber-pot.

Guan Si'er, alarmed and furious, was about to resist, but saw the brothers let down the thin gauze bed-curtain, then turn and stand guard at the door.

And in a little while there came a patter of small steps in the court.

Tong Jintai stood at the door and looked darkly at the seven or eight women in the court: "What are you to this Ge Sansu?"

The woman at their head looked decent enough, but her eyes were red and swollen. She made her courtesy first, then came before Tong Jintai, drew something heavy from her sleeve, and pressed it on him: "My lord, I am the third young lady's own second aunt. Our house has met such ruin, such a calamity out of a clear sky, that our master at home can't bear the blow and can't rise from his bed."

Tong Jintai weighed the packet a few times, felt it was at least fifty taels of gold, and twisted his mouth toward those beside him: "Oh? How is it he can't rise?"

The woman followed his glance, saw several more men standing by, and went down the row in a piteous voice, handing fifty taels of gold to each.

Once the gifts were given and the lords had taken them, she begged: "My lords, do us a kindness. We're only uneasy for the third young lady, and we'd like to speak a few words from the heart to comfort her. She's young, and has borne such grief, and it pains us past bearing. Might we beg the lords a kindness, and let us see the girl alone?"

Having said that, she held her kerchief and looked at the gold packet in Tong Jintai's hand. She shed no tears, but wept only loud enough for those in the room to hear.

Tong Jintai had no pity. He weighed the bribe in his hand and smiled coldly: "How could that be? Do you take the lords for fools?"

The woman's weeping stopped short. Gritting her teeth, she drew a deed from her sleeve and handed it to Tong Jintai: "My lord, a body has to doze off sometime in this life. What do you say?"

Tong Jintai opened the deed, saw it was a house of two mu in Yanjing, and snorted a cold laugh: "Doze off? That could be arranged, only the higher-ups have already arranged..."

He drew a breath, looked around, and made a show of greed, fanning the deed at the brothers. At last he cocked his head, and Yu Qingguan and the rest went smiling out of the little court.

Once they'd gone, Tong Jintai said to the woman: "The lords have said more than once, don't disturb the third young lady. So here's how it'll go. In a while I'll go in, and you can take it that the lord's gone deaf and blind and dozed off. We'll each give a little, and we'll both come off well. How's that?"

The woman bent her head to think, glanced at the hour, and at last gritted her teeth and nodded to Tong Jintai...

Guan Si'er lay half-down with his face to the inside of the bed, grimacing. He couldn't help it, with that dried-up old fellow crammed behind the bed sobbing low in a woman's voice.

Queer beyond anything.

He heard the dealing going on outside, those wretches, and had no idea how they'd sold him or what evil they were plotting.

He hadn't let his mind wander long when he heard Brother Jintai come to the bed, more women come in, and the old fellow behind him sob louder and more piteously.

A woman, in a voice all kindness and pity, first called out: "My, my third young lady, my poor third young lady!"

A roomful of weeping followed, and through the choking sobs Guan Si'er heard someone say: "Last night, the few of us, we all dreamed of your mother, my third young lady. A body's fate is fixed. Your mother said, those below, ohh, can't rest easy that you alone should go on suffering in this world. Others have father and mother, brothers and sisters. And what do you have? You've nothing left, my poor third young lady. Oh, what's to be done..."

Oh, so after all this to-do, here came the killing of the heart!