Taming Poison Dragons (46 page)

She looked round in a daze at her new home.

By the gatehouse stood three men awaiting her impatiently: Hong, myself, and the bridegroom. My cousin’s children threw handfuls of rice and seeds and shiny
cash
coins onto the street as she stepped towards us, her head lowered modestly – though the babe in her arms suggested it was a little late for that. I could not help smiling at the strained dignity of the bridegroom beside me.

‘Mi Feng,’ I whispered. ‘Go inside. We will lead her to where you sit.’

The bride, Su Lin’s former maid, reluctantly passed her infant son to Cousin Hong’s wife for safe-keeping, then was escorted to the courtyard where cups and wine were laid out. The couple knelt and faced each other, drinking in turn from the same bowl, while a small crowd of well-wishers murmured and joked. It did not do to joke too loudly. One could never be sure how Mi Feng might take it.

The bride came with a small dowry of
cash
and household necessities provided by Su Lin who had chosen not to join our celebration. Her absence grieved me. Within less than a year she had grown too good for us. I grieved, too, that I had not been able to afford a banquet for my loyal servant on his wedding day, the man who had saved my life a dozen times over. So it was. I could only show my goodwill through petty presents. Cousin Hong paid for the wine we drank, the food we ate. Once again I was the poor relation.

Perhaps my shame showed for Mi Feng took me to one side.

‘Well, my Lord,’ he said. ‘It’s you I should thank for all this.’

I stiffened.

‘If I could have afforded more, I would have gladly given it,’ I replied. ‘It is Hong you should thank.’

He laughed in a way I had not heard before, without a trace of harshness. It made me wonder to see him softening.

‘He wouldn’t own this place if you hadn’t given him the money. But I don’t mean that, sir. It’s time to settle down.

I’m contented enough.’

*

‘Then I am contented, too.’

He seemed embarrassed to have said so much.

‘And you have a fine son,’ I said.

A son seemed the finest thing in the world, if for no other reason than a man could encourage him to succeed where he had not.

Cousin Hong bustled over.

‘What are these long faces for? Little General, you are always frowning these days.’

The way Mi Feng’s eyes lit up at the sight of his new employer made me jealous. No doubt that was a fault in me.

So Mi Feng and his family took up residence in a tiny room beside the gatehouse and the wine shop rang with a baby’s cries. His wife helped in the kitchen and everyone seemed happy except me.

Ambition swelled and tormented me. Day by day the Imperial Examinations approached. Whenever I saw Su Lin or P’ei Ti they talked eagerly of my fine prospects until I dreaded disappointing them. They urged me to attend the Society of the Western Lake and enter my poems for the monthly competition. I did go, though only to watch and renew old acquaintances. I felt too tender to risk failure in the poetry competition. Besides, I dreaded attracting the jealousy of Lord Xiao by winning.

Nevertheless, my most recent verses found an eager audience, thousands of copies circulating through cheap wood-cut prints. Needless to say, none of the profits came my way.

I decided enough was enough.

Mi Feng was arguing with his wife in the kitchen of Hong’s wine shop and, though I carried an armful of books to the brick steps overlooking Jewel Cloud Canal, their voices disturbed my concentration. It was strange to witness so masterful a man as Mi Feng being shaped by his new wife, yet part of him evidently welcomed the change. As we all did.

She cooked meals of such flavour that Cousin Hong gained dozens of new customers. Spicy dishes, warming the blood with ginger, a dozen herbs turning plain ingredients into a banquet. And she could be tender with her husband, if patience is tenderness, listening for hours while he boasted and talked about his life. I believe this talk was a great unburdening. The exact details were kept from me. He was always reluctant to show weakness when I was around. With his wife he felt no such inhibition.

At first I felt offended to be denied the truth about his past. Yet I owed him too much to sustain a resentment.

There are limits to the frankness between master and servant; and he was no longer even my servant.

But, for all the goodwill surrounding me in Hong’s establishment, I’d had enough.

‘You wish to say something but don’t know how,’ Su Lin commented one night in the plain way she reserved for me.

We lay in each other’s arms, my head upon her breast.

Fragrance of perfume and musky sweat. Her silken sheets moulded round my skin.

‘You are so distant,’ she coaxed. ‘If you shared your burden it would be lighter.’

I rolled over and stared at the ceiling, unable to express what did not make sense.

‘Are you trying to punish me for some fault?’ she asked.

‘You are cruel not to explain.’

That word opened the cage where I’d imprisoned my thoughts.

‘Cruel people take pleasure in another’s misery,’ I said.

She considered this. In the close air of a hot summer night, our breath rose and fell.

‘You make me miserable when you hide yourself away,’

she said. ‘What have I done to make you withdraw from me? Ten days have passed since you last visited.’

I rolled over on the bed until I lay on my front.

‘Not everything I feel relates to you,’ I said.

She stiffened beside me.

‘Do I bore you, is that it?’

‘Oh, Su Lin,’ I said. ‘When you talk like that it is just a kind of game!’

‘Then what troubles you?’ she asked. ‘Am I not enough for you?’

How could I answer without hurting her? But I tried.

‘I’m sick of the city,’ I said. ‘I cannot study for the Imperial examinations in these conditions. If I am to succeed, as everyone seems to believe I must, I require space to think. The city is wasting my essential breaths.’

She pulled me over to face her.

‘What are you saying?’

‘I must go away for a while. That is all.’

It was dark, yet light enough to find each others’ eyes.

‘I remember the first time my broker ordered me to sing,’ she said. ‘It was a few weeks after Father sold me, as we travelled to the capital. My broker wished to make a little money by parading me in a roadside wine shop. Of course, everyone knew I had a fine voice, but that was beside the point. Singing for strangers is not the same as for loved ones, especially if one is shy. My broker – or should I say, owner, for he seemed to own everything I was – shook me until my teeth rattled. “Sing!” he commanded. So I did, my voice broken by sobbing. Then he beat me and said again: “Sing!” This time I did not sob, all my notes were pure. So you see, Yun Cai,’ she said, sadly. ‘I know what it is to study under hungry eyes. And I hope you do not think I encourage you to sing in the examinations in the way that horrible man did me.’

I replied with all my tenderness and ardour. Afterwards, we both pretended to sleep.

The next day I set my affairs in order and left Cousin Hong’s house followed by a youth hired to carry my bags of scrolls.

‘Take this message to P’ei Ti,’ I told Hong. ‘I’ll send the boy back with news of where I may be found should it be necessary to summon me in a hurry. P’ei Ti will know exactly what I mean.’

Many roads lead to and from the capital and I could have taken any of them. I picked the Western Highway, the one heading toward Wei Valley, because just as the compass always points north, so the heart points home. In truth, I had no idea where I was heading.

Li
after
li
passed beneath our feet. We slept in villages where gibbons cried mournfully all night. Hill country, wooded country. At once I felt at home. On the fifth day I came across a small monastery overlooking a narrow lake surrounded by steep hills. I knew at once, here was the place I sought. A passing peasant told me I had arrived at Five Gong Monastery.

‘Is it Daoist or Buddhist?’ I asked.

That peasant must have been an Immortal in disguise.

He took one look at me and said, ‘Does it matter to you, sir?’

So I proceeded up the hill to the monastery gate and begged an audience with the abbot. A crowd of monks followed curiously and I guessed they received few visitors. We bowed respectfully to each other.

‘Reverend Sir,’ I said. ‘I am a humble seeker after the Way. I beg that I should be allowed to stay in this holy place for a few weeks in order to contemplate and study.’

He looked me over shrewdly. I sensed he was a grasping kind of fellow as his reply soon made plain:

‘Sir,’ he said. ‘We welcome any who wish to study the Way. Our doors lie open. But, of course, we cannot live on lofty thoughts alone.’

A few hundred
cash
satisfied him. It represented almost the last of my wealth. I wished only to inhabit the moments flowing through me, and something about Five Gong Monastery encouraged lofty thoughts. Perhaps the view of the hills and mountains reminded me of my earli-est dreams.

The monks led me to the main hall where candles cast dancing shadows, illuminating frescoes of the Seven Daoist Immortals. The five gongs of the monastery were sounded, each five times. As the last reverberation faded, I was washed with holy water poured from a sacred lacquer bucket once used by a hermit who had lived for two hundred and fifty-three years. The abbot intoned that I was now ‘spotless as from the first’, and indeed I felt cleansed.

I believe this purifying of my essential breaths saved me during the weeks of trial and constant fear that followed.

It might seem strange that I forgot the intrigues concerning Lord Xiao so easily. Of course, I did not. He hid beneath the surface of my thoughts, troubling my dreams.

Often I deliberately emptied my mind, counting breaths to find the infinite doorway between each intake and expiration. Then I regained balance – for a while at least. Yet I could not stay there forever. And though I did not know it, events in the city were preparing to drag me back.

The five gongs resounded at dawn, noon and dusk, echoing across the valley. When they called even birds paused in their endless tasks of feeding and mating. Dull, deep, sonorous tones, rich with vibration, perfect echoes of the Way. I could not listen to them forever. I was no Immortal, just a visitor.

One afternoon the restless world summoned me back. I was fishing when a unit of horsemen wearing the uniform of the Imperial Guard galloped up the road and entered Five Gong Monastery. A few minutes later, the abbot appeared by the gate, and I could see him pointing to where I sat on a large boulder, fishing rod in hand. They trotted down the path to where I sat.

‘Yun Cai?’ called out a grizzled-looking sergeant. ‘Are you Yun Cai?’

I lowered my fishing rod, and pulled in the line.

‘You are summoned to the capital at once,’ he said, curtly. ‘From henceforth, consider yourself under close arrest, on the orders of the Chief Censor.’

I did not question his authority to cancel my freedom.

When four guardsmen are glowering at you, silence is advisable.

‘There’s a spare mount waiting for you up at the monastery,’ the sergeant continued. ‘I’ll give you half an hour to pack, then we leave.’

I nodded. The end was beginning. I anticipated a trumped-up charge from Lord Xiao, most likely a capital charge. There could be no escaping it.

I threw the single fish I had caught back into the lake and washed my hands in the pure water. It floated belly side up, a bad omen. Then I turned. The sergeant stood before me on the lakeside, holding out a pair of iron manacles.

‘ . . . Your fragrance left my being 
so long ago.
                                   Yet scent lingers in dreams
and each night I assure myself it means nothing.
I shall forget, in time, surely as morning.

Then your fragrance – honey, sweat-musk, elusive 
dew – revives 
a desire never wholly forsaken.
When I clear my nose, this curtained room
reeks of musty pain. . .’

The rains are distressingly late. A fresh edict posted on the street corners of Chunming claims the monsoon has been delayed by a black alliance between the Emperor and demons. A strange document, I must say. It also states that anyone failing to refer to the Emperor as ‘The Vile Usurper’ is guilty of treason and liable for the Four Punishments ‘or other just measures’.

The Empress-in-waiting issues edicts of this kind every few days. One struggles to remember them all, as dozens have found to their cost. Chunming has become a fine place for settling grudges by laying false charges. Each morning the square before the Prefect’s residence resounds with screams and a large pit has been dug beyond the ramparts to hold all the corpses.

Of course, we have experienced late rains before. One year the monsoon never came at all and the famine was severe. In Chunming it is safer not to recollect awkward truths. Even thoughts fall under the new edicts; thus anyone capable of doubt becomes a traitor.

A knock at the door, and a guard enters. He speaks respectfully, as all do, since the Empress-in-waiting showed me favour.

‘I have a message here, sir,’ he says. ‘A boy delivered it at the gate and went away.’

‘Lay it on the desk.’

Once unfolded, the message is absurd. The characters are wild and flowing:

I have seen Lord Yun Cai in the streets but he
hasn’t seen me. Come to the house of Shih-kao in
the Fourth Ward this afternoon to pray for rain.

It is not signed. The paper is cheap and mottled by mould. The ink has been badly mixed. Such a summons should be ignored.

I pace the room. Can it have come from the nightwarder, Golden Bells? But surely he is illiterate, and only my dream of freeing P’ei Ti makes me think of him. There is a single way to discover the truth. I must be bold for P’ei Ti’s sake.

Someone is following me. I am sure of it. But when I glance back the street seems ordinary, full of guileless faces. I pause at a public well and look round for suspicious loiterers. No one. So why does my back itch?