Chapter 99

Guan Si'er hadn't seen much of the world. But in everything he'd ever known, women were soft and weak. They needed protecting and caring for.

A few of his brothers had tricked him into this. He lay on the wicked woman's kang, still in a muddle.

These wicked wenches talked their queer talk, a dozen mouths at once. What did they say? That the girl had always feared pain, even as a child, and was such a delicate thing.

That the girl had been raised like the apple of the house's eye. One little knock and she'd lie in her mother's arms a whole afternoon... They said her mother doted on her. They said how lovely her little brother was, and how wretchedly he'd died, and that he must be weeping for his sister down below, day after day...

They said her father, cut down by the rebel soldiers, had loved the third young lady most in life. They said there was no one left at her old home either, and how pitiful that was. They said her sickly elder brother had fretted for her, and at the last they said a family must always be together...

Guan Si'er understood at last. They'd turned their mouths into steel blades, and a dozen at once had scraped the frail girl's heart into ribbons.

To a girl who's just lost her whole family, you need only keep telling her that death is the family reunited, that death is release, and she'll go to it as to a load set down.

How venomous, then.

The wenches tried several times to press up to Guan Si'er, and Tong Jintai stopped them each time. He'd taken their money after all, so he let them talk their fill for an incense-stick's time.

Through it, of course, he played deaf and dumb.

The old one with the mimic's throat wailed herself hoarse at last, and only then did Yu Qingguan's scolding come from the door: "Old Third! Enough's enough. This is the Guard garrison, not some house's mourning hall. The lord's angry now, get out quick. We can't sit here listening to funeral-wailing all morning. Aren't you sick of it?"

The woman at their head wept her way out and begged: "My lord, we only ache for the third young lady. Spare us a hand..."

She had no tears, only the moan, and she drew out coin-shaped ornaments.

Yu Qingguan was vexed and cursed her flat: "Get lost, quick! You think your house's money's big as a millstone? Go, go, the lords all carry the risk on our backs, mind the higher-ups don't call us to account..."

He played the villain well, and let out a shred of killing-air, and the women couldn't bear it and gave up their weeping, helpless. But going out the door, the one who called herself second aunt still made a lunge, and Tong Jintai caught her sleeve and flung her out.

"Get out!"

Tong Jintai stood on no ceremony this time.

He followed them all the way, watched them to the gate, and watched them into the cart. When the sickening lot were out of sight, he spat, and turned back to where his eldest brother was.

Coming in, he saw a man of forty-five or fifty chatting and smiling with his eldest brother. He looked closer and knew him too. This was Shen Qin, Assistant Prefect of Shuntian, and the Wu poisoning case was now under this Lord Shen's hearing.

And that third young lady of the Ge was the one Tong Jintai had begged the chief to shelter.

Chen Dasheng saw Tong Jintai come in and asked: "All gone?"

Tong Jintai nodded, his whole face disgust: "Mm, cleared off! Aiya, I've had my eyes opened today. Tss, can't say it, it sickens me to say it. Truly, truly a pack of venomous women."

That said, he set the deed-paper and gold packet from his sleeve before Lord Shen: "You've come at a good time, this is what I took. Heh, when you go, my lord, take it along."

Shen Qin smiled and shook the packet open. He watched a few gleaming little gold ingots fall out and said carelessly: "I thought it was something! Lord Tong, keep it. You've run about front and back these days and put your brothers to trouble. The good man's money we don't touch, but peeling the Wu's grease is a joy to see and hear. They've been flinging silver about like water these days, and what's this of yours? You don't see even our Shuntian Prefecture can hardly bear it."

Of Yanjing's officials the Shuntian Prefect had the hardest post. Besides being hard-boned, they were mostly good at handling folk.

Tong Jintai smiled and sat across from Lord Shen. He gave a rough account of the women's talk just now, and when he'd finished he smiled, cold: "On the battlefield of old I thought that was the hell on earth. Today I've had my eyes opened. What was ours? Straight and plain, no more than a clean death. Heh, this lot of women, at killing the heart every one's a master, and their hearts are truly black!"

Lord Shen smiled: "Black? Black indeed, and Lord Tong doesn't know the inside of it. These two days my clerks and I have reckoned up the two houses' assets. The Ge did tribute-ink a dozen and more generations, and their land and houses at the old home alone are worth two or three million strings, let alone the recipes for their tribute-inks and colored inks."

Chen Dasheng reached back and scratched his rear and sighed: "I looked over the law these two days too. This girl's an unmarried daughter, and can take three parts of the family estate at most, and that's a million strings at least. It's an heirless fortune! Think, she's the only one left now, and with so much money, however you look at it it's no good thing!"

Shen Qin shook his head, helpless, and slowly put out three fingers: "You've hit it. My place is a sieve, and the most loyal little clerk, what does he earn a year? Twenty or thirty strings, and a whole house to feed on it.

"With the Wu flinging money as they do, ten thousand won't buy you, then a hundred thousand, and a hundred thousand no, then two hundred thousand. I think no better of myself. Who hasn't wife and children and old folk behind him? Reckoned to five hundred thousand strings I too wavered. Heh, I thought then, the yamen's had its hidden tricks for generations, and it's only one little girl, and this one stroke and I'm dereliction and exile at worst, but I could lay up three generations' windfall for my heirs, so why not do it?"

Lord Shen was a rare sort, that he could say such a thing to Chen Dasheng's face. It showed a heart aboveboard.

Chen Dasheng found him amusing and smiled too: "If you can't withstand five hundred thousand, my lord, don't tell me a few mud-legs like us can?"

Lord Shen laughed low: "You lords are chosen by His Majesty, and are not as those outside. You've all come through life and death several times, and I fear you saw through the lure of money long ago..."

Chen Dasheng smiled: "You're not bad yourself, my lord."

"You flatter me, that one small good I do have..."

Tong Jintai couldn't bear the two of them so. He patted the armrest and shook his head, helpless: "In broad day under the Son of Heaven's feet, I've had my eyes opened now. The Wu are great Yanjing merchants too, and how are their means so sickening?"

Chen Dasheng propped his hurt rear and crawled forward a little, smiling: "Sickening? An ordinary ink-cake, from gathering the stuff to the counter, earns but a few dozen wen the piece, but how many readers are there under heaven? The Wu eldest branch holds eight parts of the Wu wealth. Our Emperor's meaning is, this case comes from money's evil, so confiscate the Wu estate and pay the Ge. Heh, the Ge are heirless now, only a just-grown unmarried daughter left, and by law she may take three parts of both the Ge and Wu estates. All told, as Lord Shen says, that's three million strings at least. Tss, the sum alone frightens you to death to hear."

Lord Shen nodded away: "Just so. She's a girl of solid true gold! But if she dies, by our law her blood-kin may name an heir to carry on the incense. And the sickening thing is, the Ge's blood-kin are only the Wu second and third branches, and that Ge girl hates the Wu to the bone, so how would she agree? And I don't believe the Wu eldest branch dared poison a sister's whole family on their own authority. There's deep water here."

Tong Jintai looked at Chen Dasheng, and the two shook their heads, helpless. At last Chen Dasheng asked: "And the Prefect's meaning?"

Lord Shen rose and made his courtesy: "Ah, it's for this I came today. Our old Prefect's meaning is, before the case is tried, would the lords of the Long Saber garrison take some further trouble, whatever comes, and shelter the poor child. This Ge and Wu case, on the face of it the facts are clear, but we few old clerks put our heads together and think it's likely not so simple. And this, of course, is the higher-ups' meaning too, so the investigating will likely be drawn out a while."

He made a digging gesture, and raised his brows, and pointed toward the Great Liang palace.

Chen Dasheng had spent two years at the Emperor's side, and had long since read the old man's temper through. The Wu's world-wide money-flinging made too great a show, and the Emperor was tight of hand. He likely had his eye on the Wu fortune.

Heh, what was this? Hai, it was evil repaid with evil, you might say.

When Tong Jintai had seen Lord Shen off, Chen Dasheng had someone call Guan Si'er over.

"What!" Guan Si'er cried low: "Brother, they're pinning it on us? Is everyone at the Shuntian Prefecture dead?"

Chen Dasheng turned painfully on his side and crooked a finger at him: "Come here."

Chen Dasheng reached out and gave him a flick on the head and scolded: "You wretch, and still the face to grumble. You were the quick one that night. Of all to pick up, you picked up a great trouble! A whole courtyard of lords, and believe it or not, tomorrow when the case closes this girl's good name is gone too."

Guan Si'er held his head and said nothing. A good while later he said, aggrieved: "Then what's to be done? Send her back to Qingfeng? Save your pains! That Ge girl's eaten nothing these two days. I think she means not to live."

Tong Jintai and Yu Qingguan lifted the door-curtain and came in, and Yu Qingguan tossed a packet of gold onto the couch: "Were it me, I'd not want to live either. What does a person live for? Well, one calamity, and the elders who could rule the house are gone. A new dynasty come at last, and she follows her mother to her grandmother's house to seek a way to live, and well, the whole family's wiped out, the line left without an heir! One little girl, propped up on one breath of spirit, but for the thought of avenging the whole family, hmph, I think the day the verdict comes down is this Ge girl's death-day."

Tong Jintai smiled, cold: "It's no easy thing to want to live. To want to die, is that hard?"

Chen Dasheng, helpless: "Kill the man, kill the heart. Tell me, how can people be evil to this pitch?"

Tong Jintai curled his lip: "Who knows? Money stirs it. Only watch, this world-wide money-flinging has sent the rest of their house onto our Emperor's blade-edge, and that's their comeuppance too. Only a pity, so fine a girl, tss, a flower's age, and it's a shame. Once a body's heart won't live, who can save her?"

Guan Si'er was thinking of who knew what. He sat there blank, and after a long while said suddenly: "Brother! I think there's something wrong here!"

Chen Dasheng looked at him: "What's wrong?"

Guan Si'er drew a breath, stood up sharp, and said low and fierce to Chen Dasheng: "The books have it wrong! What's this, live poor in a busy market and none ask after you, live rich in a deep mountain and distant kin come? What's this, all is fate and nothing lies in a man's hands? What's this, with wine and meat brothers aplenty, but in sharp need when did you ever see one? These sayings are wrong!"

He backed to the door, shaking his head, sure of it: "Why should what's written in books be right? I've a brain, and I feel it, the books have it wrong!"

That said, he turned and ran out.

He never saw his few brothers looking after him with the strangest smiles. A good while later Tong Jintai jeered: "A lazy maggot. The one man who won't rise early every day, calling him up is hard as killing him."

Yu Qingguan took up the mockery: "And now he'd fetch her foot-washing water every day, gladly."

Chen Dasheng coughed, covered his mouth, and laughed at last: "Listen to you. His purity's gone, after all... hff..."

The elder brothers fell to great mockery, and once they'd had their fill they said, well content: "It's good. He's grown up, and knows now that sometimes the books talk nonsense too..."

Guan Si'er didn't know he'd walked into his brothers' snare. He was miserable, terribly miserable, and didn't know just where the misery lay, only that his whole heart and body were wrung with it.

He ran to his own court, turned his chests and cases over, and dug out a set of clothes and a head-wrap he'd never worn. He gathered the pile and trotted to the back court.

Ge Sansu these two days was all despair, a walking corpse.

None needed to press her. She did mean to die, and had long since planned it. She'd wait for the family's case to close, and her mother's and brothers' and sisters' wrongs righted, then buy a grave-plot and lay her kin in the earth. Then she'd ready a coffin for herself, lie in it, and take poison, and the family would be together, and this human world would be cold no more.

She knew she ought to eat a little, but she couldn't get it down.

Today was strange too. Two matrons had carried her on their backs to the back court and set beancurd pudding before her to eat here, saying they were cleaning the front today.

Hmph, telling it to the ghosts. There'd surely be some doing again.

Ge Sansu was very clear-headed just now, and reasoned it out. The Wu had been generations in Yanjing, and she a lone orphan. What if no one ruled for her, and her family had died for nothing?

Thinking of it, Ge Sansu calmly raised her arm, drew a silver hairpin from the back of her head, and held it, slowly grinding it against the grey brick wall behind her.

She'd resolved it. She'd wait for a result, good or bad, and mean to live through neither. If the result was bad, she'd find the Wu and finish the whole old Wu house with this thing...

The girl let her fancy run, as though they stood there for her to kill.

To be sure, that an ordinary little girl, through such a thing, could slowly harden, and in two days shed not one tear, was no easy matter.

A burst of hurried steps came into the court, and Ge Sansu, unhurried, put the pin back in.

Guan Si'er rushed into the room. These two days he couldn't look at Ge Sansu's face. But stirred this morning by that pack of women, he found he no longer cared.

He saw her, and his heart clenched.

Two or three days, no more, and a whole good little girl had thinned to a rack of bones. Ge Sansu calmly lifted her face and propped a pair of big, clear black-and-white eyes on Guan Si'er.

Guan Si'er pressed his lips, set the clothes on the table, and pointed at the beancurd pudding: "Eat at least one bowl. Don't, and in a while I'll pry your mouth open and pour it down! Choose, eat it yourself, or have me pour it?"

Ge Sansu blinked, took up the spoon, and quietly, spoon by spoon, began to eat the pudding.

Guan Si'er drew a deep breath and looked at this wicked, ah, never mind, this pitiful thing. She was eating, that was well.

A bowl of pudding down, Ge Sansu quietly set the spoon and looked at Guan Si'er.

Guan Si'er pointed at the clothes and head-wrap: "Change into these!"

That said, he left the room and stood quiet outside, waiting.

No telling how long he stood, till at last from within that wicked, never mind, that Ge girl said: "My lord, trouble you to come in."

The voice was weak too. Ai, it won't do not to eat.

Guan Si'er came in, and Ge Sansu, changed now, said to him, helpless: "Trouble you, my lord, call that aunt in. I, I can't stand up."

Guan Si'er nodded and went out, and before long drove a carriage into the back court.

He drove the cart out of the garrison, kicked the horse's rump, and let it go as it would. The old horse knew the road, and taking the kick, went off toward Yanjing's east gate.

Great summer, just past noon, and the day was hot. The cart went out the east gate, and Guan Si'er lifted the curtain.

He looked at Ge Sansu within, saw her clutching a blanket, and asked: "You, that, aren't you hot?"

Ge Sansu shook her head numbly.

Guan Si'er nodded, reached and took the rein, and led the horse toward the edge of the moat. No telling how far he went, till there was no road, and a river before them. He got down and said to Ge Sansu within: "That, you, you come down, I've something to say to you."

Ge Sansu was blank a moment, then leaned on the cart-frame and slowly came down. Guan Si'er thought her slow, perhaps, and stepped up and reached out and hauled her down.

Mark this hauling. Women are not to be crossed, they love to settle old scores.

In the decades after, whenever this couple quarreled it was a to-do, and Ge Sansu would say, her whole face wrath, you old beast, how did you treat me back then? Couldn't even mind a person, hauled me off the cart like a chick, hauled me all the way to the riverbank, and the damp there, and me days without food, gone soft as gruel, and I sat straight down and soaked both layers of clothes...

"Sit!"

Guan Si'er saw a spot where the wild grass grew thick and looked soft, and pointed there for Ge Sansu to sit.

Ge Sansu very calmly sat, and didn't look at him, but looked at the river.

He'd brought her here, and Guan Si'er still hadn't thought how to talk the girl round to living.

He set his hands on his hips, opened his mouth, and paced the riverbank forlorn a good while before he got his words out at last.

He dared not look at the girl's face, but looked at the river-water and said: "That, I used to love talking nonsense, and I and my brothers aren't honest, but today, today I want to say something true, truly, I'll tell you a thing, that, a thing I've told no one!"

Ge Sansu thought this fellow strange. Every day cursing and grumbling, no good face for her, and now he'd brought her to the riverbank to say such queer things.

She didn't take it up, but hugged her knees and slowly bowed her head.

Guan Si'er hadn't looked for her to say anything, and looked at the river and said: "I had a name once. Little Beast!"

Ge Sansu started, and lifted her face to that back.

"Ah, that was truly the name, Little Beast! In fact I had a father and a mother, brothers and sisters, a grandfather and grandmother. I'm not stupid, I knew where my home was..."

Here Guan Si'er turned and looked at Ge Sansu.

He saw Ge Sansu prop her big eyes on him, not blinking, and he said in earnest: "You just listen, you, you needn't answer me. Mm, where was I?"

He turned back and went on looking at the river: "I knew where home was. My home's in Mishan County in Chongling. My father's surnamed Zhao. If they hadn't called me Little Beast, I'd be surnamed Zhao too. Tss, I don't know why I tell you this..."

Ge Sansu wondered in her heart, and thought this little lord's head was wrong.

"Put it this way. I'm not like my brothers. Before I was seven I thought my real name was Little Beast, for they all called me so, and I took it for a name. But once, beaten by the steward, beaten hard, I heard a matron say, after all he's the Fifth Master's child, killing him's no matter, but mind someone seizes on this weakness and spreads it, and your position's lost. And the steward spared me.

"That gave me thoughts, and cunning. And then I asked about in secret, and found the tallest mountain in our Mishan County was the Zhao's, and the widest fields the Zhao's, and the best academy the Zhao's, and the most famous able men all the Zhao's, and I was the born son of the Zhao Fifth Master, but got out of wedlock, so they all called me Little Beast..."

To speak out a thing on the heart is an easing thing, but Ge Sansu didn't want to hear more, and stammered at last: "You, why do you tell me this?"

Guan Si'er laughed, and still not turning said: "For nothing. Just want to tell you. Hear it if you like, and if not, cover your ears and take it for my breaking wind!" No sound behind him, and Guan Si'er went on: "My own mother was the widow of Zhao Fifth Master's sworn brother, and my father went to call on her, and stayed one night, and there was me. You don't know, the Zhao, reckoning back, have produced many high-charactered great scholars, disciples all over the realm, mm, why do I tell this..."

Ge Sansu's astonished voice came from behind: "The Mishan Zhao?"

Guan Si'er snorted a laugh, and said to the river, much eased: "Yes! That very house. High of character they are, and in some hundreds of years the one child got out of wedlock was me. My mother bore me and hanged herself, and her husband's house of course couldn't keep me, and sent me back to the Zhao and squeezed no little money out of them...

"This too I pieced out later from the steward's drunken mutterings, bit by bit. It was about so. See, I have a father, a mother, a clan, my house produced great scholars generation on generation, and I'm a Little Beast, and can't read. Before I was eight I never slept in a bed, but summers found some straw-nest or a sheep-pen to make do, and winters I slept in the stove-pit..."

Ge Sansu murmured: "What guilt has a little child?"

But Guan Si'er said, much eased, smiling: "No guilt. Bad luck, and you have to accept it!" He turned and said to Ge Sansu in earnest: "You have to accept it too. You've just bad luck."

Ge Sansu didn't want to speak, and went on hugging her legs.

Guan Si'er drew a breath: "When I was a Little Beast I was very happy, truly! I knew nothing at all. I thought I was born to suffer, born to be beaten, born to live like a beast. I didn't know what a good life was, nor who I was. But when did the discontent start in me? Yes, with that beating, when the matron said I was the Fifth Master's son...

Ge Sansu murmured: "Did you ask him?"

Guan Si'er picked up a flat stone and skipped it on the water.

"No. Zhao Fifth Master was headmaster of some River-Jujube academy..."

"Hezhao Academy. Crane, as in crane. Zhao, as in edict."

"You know the place?"

"Mm, their students used tung-oil lampblack ink, and my house always supplied it..."

"Mm, is it dear?"

"Dear? What?"

"Oh, I mean that ink of yours."

"There's dear, and there's cheap."

"Oh... and there you know everything, and I don't, know nothing at all, grew up to eight, and the little steward of the livestock-pen out back lost at gambling and sold me far, far off. Hff..."

Guan Si'er suddenly laughed, and turned and grinned his white teeth at Ge Sansu: "Does the Ge girl know why I'm called Guan Si'er?"

Ge Sansu shook her head.

Guan Si'er couldn't hold his laugh, and said, choking it back: "I saw the steward had dumped me, and the back court had its hours for meals, and who'd trouble over me? Afraid to miss the meal, I lay on the slaver's cart and shouted, Steward! Steward! And the slaver was just then forging a contract, and offhand wrote me down as Guan Si'er, and from then I was Guan Si'er..."

That said, Guan Si'er turned and looked at the river, and said firm: "After that there was only myself in this world. I opened my own eyelids and looked at my own sky, my own human world. I had nothing! But I wanted to live too. Others took me for a Little Beast, but I saw myself a person. I am a person!

"I never once thought myself a Little Beast. A beast walks on four hooves, but I walk on two feet, so I'm a person! I was sold and sold again, and walked a long, long road, and wore no shoes before twelve, and ate no meat..."

He heard a rustling behind him and turned and smiled at Ge Sansu: "Ge girl, I hope you can live, you must live well! Or you've come to this world for nothing! I'm not good with words, but, hai, that's the sense of it. See, even Heaven won't let you die, so you must live as well as I do.

"See, I've become an official, and learned to read, and I've a two-court house in Qingfeng, and two manors besides. There are too many in this world with hard lots. My granny, my sister-in-law, my house's teacher, none can weigh his misfortune against another's, for misfortune can't be weighed, truly! Dare to weigh it and you'll surely lose! Living's just this, isn't it? Why should the bad feast and drink while we good ones suffer, tell me..."

Guan Si'er hadn't run out his talk when he saw Ge Sansu burst into wild weeping. She wept till Guan Si'er was at a loss, and he stood blank, and stood, and saw the Ge girl fall into his arms and go on weeping...

He thought, damn it, my purity's gone again.