Breaking Bamboo (48 page)

Two months after Guang’s arrival in Apricot Corner Court, he stood in the centre of his bedchamber. Tall like all the Yun clan, he over-shadowed Lu Ying. Yet his mastery was an illusion, for this broad-chested man leaned on her as an old dotard depends on his stick. If she let him go he would topple.

‘Another step?’

Her voice was coaxing. She sensed the flutter in his heart.

That he who had defied every Mongol weapon was afraid to lose his dignity. This aroused her pity but she said:

‘Commander Yun Guang could perhaps reach that chair by the wall?’

It was the seat she normally used when conversing with him, a decorous distance from the bed. Leaning heavily on her arm he lurched to the high-backed chair and lowered himself slowly, struggling all the while for air.

‘My chest,’ he gasped. ‘Not my legs. My chest.’

Several days later the exercise had been repeated many times and he could walk across the room with the assistance of a stick. Lu Ying watched and clapped her hands to frighten off demons or invisible fox-fairies.

‘How glad I am!’

Then she faltered, embarrassed to have shown so much enthusiasm. He hobbled back to his bed and settled under the covers. Autumn was becoming winter, cold and dry. In the mornings patterns of frost lay across the glazed paper windows. Lu Ying sometimes wrote the only characters she knew well in the layer of white crystals – those of her name.

‘I am surprised the Mongols have not resumed their assaults,’ he said. ‘Chen Song believes they are waiting for something. But what? What?’

Wrapped in a heavy brocade shawl against the cold, Lu Ying took her usual seat.

‘I am no wise general,’ she said.

‘Of course, forgive me.’

‘But I am quite as stern as the Infernal Judges themselves in one regard!’

‘What is that?’

She tried to maintain her pose of varnished good humour.

Sincerity shone through the corner-glances of her eyes. She lowered her gaze to the floor.

‘You will be better soon,’ she said. ‘Each day your strength doubles. Yet I fear that when you return. . .’ She gestured at the city outside, visible as a thousand straight wooden lines and towers against a pale sky. ‘When you return to the ramparts, I am afraid you will not care what happens to you.’

Guang looked up with deep-set, brooding eyes.

‘Miss Lu Ying, first tell me. Do you care what happens to
you
? Once you told me you did not.’

He had trapped her so easily. Her heart was a moth enclosed in his hand.

‘There was a time when I did not,’ she said, cautiously.

‘What has changed your view?’

His voice was insistent.

‘Oh, I cannot say. Do not ask me.’

‘I do ask.’

She felt herself redden.

‘Perhaps I feel things that make me more alive,’ she said, reluctantly. ‘And when one feels alive, one fears to lose life.’

He nodded. Then Guang shook his head in a gesture of wonder.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘For what?’

‘Do you really not know?’

Now Lu Ying buried her slender hands in broad sleeves. Oh, he was provoking! At least Wang Ting-bo had been simple to manage. One merely listened and occasionally joked about those who offended him. Nothing more was required. With Guang came a necessity for something alien to Peacock Hill.

She had no name for it, other than sincerity.

‘You thank me for delivering your medicine and meals at the times prescribed by Dr Shih,’ she said.

‘You are wrong. There’s more to it than that!’

Her tongue felt thick. Her throat dry. Lu Ying detected a foolish trembling in her limbs.

‘I do not understand,’ she said.

‘I believe you do. Perhaps you choose not to understand. No doubt you expect to be recalled as His Excellency’s concubine at any time. After all, what is a poor soldier like me compared to a Pacification Commissioner? I believe you know exactly why I thanked you.’

His look grew hard, so that for an uncomfortable moment he resembled Lord Yun. Then it softened and he sighed.

‘I wish to thank you for helping me to glimpse the future again,’ he said, smiling gently. ‘That is all. I have learned to face the past over these last few months. How sick I am of war!

How tired of everything I once thought glorious. Do you know how I calm my spirits when I think of resuming my commission? I close my eyes and imagine Wei Valley, as it was, before Bayke came. Then I daydream and hear the cries of the gibbons at dawn and dusk. I walk down Wei Valley with Shih at my side, fishing poles in our hands. How we joke and laugh!

You see, the past can be quite resolved if one daydreams. . . As though mistakes and unkindness had never been.’

His voice trailed. A look of sorrow aged his handsome face.

He turned his head on the pillow toward the blank wooden wall.

‘I have said too much,’ he muttered, falling into a troubled sleep.

But for Lu Ying he had not said enough. Or not the thing she had begun to secretly desire. She rose and sat beside him on the bed, stroking his long black hair. Slowly Guang’s eyes ceased to flutter and he snored softly. Lu Ying maintained her position as dusk entered the room. Finally, she leaned forward and touched his forehead with a brush of her lips. Guang murmured anxiously in his sleep.

*

Even in siege-time the Feast of Lanterns could not be neglected.

People flowed through the streets as the first moon of the New Year rose above Mount Wadung, greeting neighbours or simply waving lanterns attached to bamboo sticks. An Immortal peering down from the Jade Emperor’s Cloud Terrace would have seen a hundred thousand fireflies or winking stars dotting the streets and ramparts of the Twin Cities. Had that same Immortal looked beyond the city, he would have spied as many fireflies in the Mongol encampments, and perhaps wondered in what way besieger and besieged differed, for both created light.

Before the Mongols arrived all respectable folk would have been decorously drunk by midnight. Now, only the very wealthy or those with influential relatives had the means to blink up at the full moon with a spinning head.

Lu Ying attended the Yun family party in a gown of night-blue silk. It was her plainest, chosen not to shame Madam Cao’s simple wardrobe. Still she looked exquisite; more beguiling for a little modesty.

Because the night was mild they sat round the apricot tree, which Guang had festooned with paper lanterns. The sound of drums and flutes floated through the night air. Many of Old Hsu’s relatives were on the other side of the courtyard, having a celebration of their own, their first sign of public happiness since his death. All the people of Apricot Corner Court used the communal cooking fire to prepare what little grain and vegetables they had gathered to greet the promise of spring.

At first Lu Ying felt uncomfortable in such humble company, though a quantity of wine provided by friends of Captain Xiao to speed his recovery, warmed everyone’s spirits. In that small taste of oblivion they fared better than many a grieving heart in Water Basin Ward.

So Lu Ying tipsily followed Shih and his brother’s passionate conversation about the Great Khan’s ambitions. Their faces, always peculiarly similar, seemed more alike than ever in the red glow of the flickering fire. She was surprised by the intensity of their debate. The brothers seemed to assume contra dictory positions almost by habit, circling each other like watchful cocks. As often before, she sensed some unspoken resentment between them and – without troubling herself too deeply – thought it a shame. Their argument was all about Imperial policy, nothing real or close to a person’s heart. Lu Ying caught Madam Cao’s eye.

The older woman leaned forward conspiratorially, her glance bright from unaccustomed draughts of wine.

‘It reminds me of when Guang and Shih were first re-united after their long separation,’ she whispered. ‘Before you knew them.’

‘I wish I had,’ said Lu Ying, quickly raising her wine-bowl to cover her confusion, for she had revealed too much. Madam Cao nodded.

‘Actually, when they were arguing then, they were just as dull as they are now.’

The two women shared a secret smile concealed by hands.

Shih soon left for his bed, too exhausted by his labours at the Relief Bureau to pass up an opportunity for sleep, even at Festival-time. As a dutiful wife, Cao followed, though Lu Ying suspected she was enjoying their midnight conversation.

Once they had gone, Lu Ying realised she was alone with Guang and that even the noisy Hsu clan had gone inside. A fat, smiling moon floated above Apricot Corner Court. She was used to Guang’s company after tending him through his long weakness, but tonight she felt his presence as a kind of restlessness. She said nothing, and waited for him to speak.

Guang seemed fascinated by the embers of the fire.

‘Lady Lu Ying,’ he said, at last. ‘Are you cold?’

‘My shawl is quite thick,’ she replied.

He resumed his examination of the glowing ashes, then said,

‘Lady Lu Ying, will you allow me to ask an impudent question?’

‘That depends on the extent of its impudence,’ she said, pleased by the cleverness of her reply. And indeed he smiled, though she detected he was uneasy.

‘Quite so. Then my question is this: has His Excellency Wang Ting-bo approached you to. . . in any way one might construe?’ he fell silent. ‘But perhaps I pry where I should not.’

‘You do not pry,’ she murmured.

‘Very well, I shall be blunt. Has His Excellency sent word that he wishes you to regain your former position?’

Now both were looking into each other’s eyes in a disturbingly frank way, the hasty beat of her heart uncomfortable and longed-for.

‘He has not,’ she said. ‘But there have been hints! Do you not recall the letter you read out to me? I hardly understand it, except as a hint.’

‘I remember it well,’ he said.

Guang sat back on the gnarled bench beside the apricot tree.

‘Hints are not certainties,’ she offered.

‘Of course. They are possibilities, nothing more.’

When Guang rose his expression touched her with foreboding.

‘Soon I must return to my duties on the ramparts,’ he said.

‘Because of your attentions – and Shih’s, of course, and Sister-in-law’s – my strength is almost what it once was. I wish to thank you.’

He bowed stiffly.

‘If we were free,’ he said, quietly. ‘To choose as one might wish. . . but you are bound to another, a great and noble gentleman, one whose generosity feeds my dearest relatives. I must consider their welfare before my own. You appear startled! Forgive me for adding to your confusion. You, too, must always choose what is best for you.’

Before she could reply, Yun Guang left her alone beneath the branches of the apricot tree and the waxy, shining moon.

The next morning he resumed his busy office as Commander of Artillery in a ceremony witnessed by hundreds of guardsmen and Wang Ting-bo himself. So pressing were his duties that, as in the days before his wound, he scarcely found time to visit Apricot Corner Court. Lu Ying believed he was avoiding her; and while she approved his prudence, found it oddly disconcerting.

*

Madam Cao could not deceive herself: Lord Yun’s bad days were more frequent. They swept through Apricot Corner Court, touching all its inhabitants. The old man had taken to railing at Fan-maker Hsu’s family, threatening eviction if they did not pay a greater share of their harvest. Perhaps he believed their fans had magically become baskets of rice. Certainly he was obsessed by the thought of hoarding food – or what it might buy during a desperate siege. Although Dr Shih assured his neighbours no eviction would take place, Lord Yun created ill-feeling where none had existed before.

Bad days were when an invisible demon called Bayke stalked every room and peered in through shuttered windows. Bayke’s eyes glowed like coals and his bushy eyebrows smouldered. Bad days were when Lord Yun’s only comfort was his fishbowl full of friendly demons. A feeble comfort. The fish-demons could only hold off Bayke, never vanquish him. Whenever Dr Shih heard that Bayke was back, he hurried home from the North Medical Relief Bureau and administered a potent dose. After that Lord Yun slept fitfully, plagued by evil dreams.

Not all days were bad. Cao dreaded the good ones most of all. They started predictably. Lord Yun would bellow for his breakfast and when it came, find fault with every morsel. If Cao brought it, he might fling down the bowl, wasting precious food. However, if Lu Ying delivered the meal, shuffling daintily, he would pretend it was a banquet, insisting she stay until he had finished every mouthful. Cao sometimes listened at the door, but he said little. Lu Ying later told her that Lord Yun never took his eyes off her, even while dipping chopsticks or dabbing his mouth with a napkin.

Cao and Dr Shih were too busy at the Relief Bureau to maintain a constant guard. On several occasions quantities of food sent by Wang Ting-bo to nourish his former concubine went missing. Afterwards Lord Yun would be found drunk on the coarsest of home-brewed spirits imaginable. Then his railing lost all decency. He taunted Shih and Cao with their childlessness, accusing his son of lacking a man’s natural
yang
.

As for Cao’s womb, it was a shrivelled dried out plum, an ugly, malodorous bladder. Or worse. These insults struck deep. It had long been a fear of hers that their lack of children stemmed from a cursed womb; that her own father had punished her unfilial conduct with barren organs.

Then low spirits would settle like a freezing river fog on Madam Cao. For she could not deceive herself: her failure to produce a child had put the treasure of Shih’s love in question.

One could hardly reproach any man for wishing to fulfil his duty. That meant the production of heirs, so the ancestral rites would be maintained forever. Yet she had failed. Her womb, as Lord Yun said, was a shrivelled, dried-out plum.

Often his drunken tirades ended in a threat to order his son’s divorce, leading to rumours in neighbouring courtyards. Those keen to defend a parent’s rights supported Lord Yun out of strict principle. Some even averted their eyes as Cao hurried through Water Basin Ward.