Breaking Bamboo (26 page)

‘Still at the Relief Bureau.’

‘Then why are you here?’

He cast a longing glance at the pot of tea. Cao poured him a cup. He drained it with a loud slurp.

‘Master sent me for moxa and other medicines.’

Chung frowned uncertainly, producing a scrap of paper.

‘He made me take this list in case I forgot.’

‘Give it to me,’ said Cao. ‘I will gather what is needed.’

Chung’s eyes were fixed on the tray of covered dishes so she served him his food. While she measured out medicine, Chung shovelled with his chopsticks.

‘How is the Relief Bureau?’ she asked.

His chopsticks paused. Resumed again. Though Chung had not been spared the sight of death in his young life she had never seen him so troubled.

‘Why must a single a man contain so much blood?’ he asked, wonderingly.

He started to tremble and grains of rice fell back into the bowl.

‘Madam, I heard a rumour that all apprentices are to be pressed into the Militia. Is it true?’

‘I do not know.’

‘Yet I heard it.’

She continued to spoon out dried raspberry leaves.

‘Perhaps it is true. The city needs men on its walls or it will fall.’

He swallowed another mouthful and chewed morosely.

‘Madam,’ he said. ‘I cannot be a soldier.’

‘I have no power over that, Chung.’

‘But you do,’ he insisted. ‘Master is Captain Xiao’s brother.

He could ask him to arrange for me to stay as I am.’

‘You are upset,’ she said, soothingly. ‘Eat some more and drink that tea.’

His fist banged on the counter.

‘If you had seen what I have tonight, you would know I cannot join the militia! You must persuade Master! I insist on it!’

Despite her surprise, Cao looked stern.

‘
Insist?
You should understand there are limits, Chung!

Among his many concerns Captain Xiao can hardly intercede for an apprentice, however dear to us. His business is very pressing. We must all do our duty.’

Chung glared at her in an unseemly way. His red-rimmed eyes showed no agreement with her plea. When he spoke again, it came quietly.

‘You forget, Madam, that I know all about the circumstances of your marriage. For you told me yourself.’

A deep emptiness entered Dr Shih’s cosy shop. Assumptions of the past, mists of friendship and loyalty, parted to reveal a void within. Cao’s breath held for that moment. Her eyes fixed on his familiar face. It was sullen and resolute. Then she breathed out.

‘Oh, Chung!’

‘You heard me.’

They tested a silence years of trust had once filled. Cao realised she felt tearful. Chung’s eyes lowered and she understood he was ashamed.

‘Take this parcel to Dr Shih,’ she said, coldly. ‘Tell him everything on the list is here. And take these bowls of food for him, only be careful not to spill any.’

Chung rose reluctantly. He flapped plump fingers.

‘Madam will understand I am distressed!’ he cried. ‘But I am not a fool. Not what everyone thinks – oh yes, I know how little I am respected! Why should I suffer what might be avoided?’

Her face showed no expression.

‘I mean what I said. I cannot be a soldier. I will not!’

‘I shall speak to Dr Shih,’ she said.

He departed without saying more. Cao was left to the comfort of her tea. Chung’s threat filled the shop like an unwholesome odour.

*

While mistress and apprentice spoke, Lu Ying was negotiating a misty gateway. Her silks were so heavy they weighed her down as she advanced through the fog. Her jade and silver hairpiece bent her neck like a yoke. When she emerged into daylight there was no need to walk further. For she had become a fluttering oriole, skimming over a vast city.

At once she knew the place and marvelled. Below spread Kaifeng, the former capital, generations ago before the Middle Kingdom was divided in the reign of the Emperor Huizong.

How well she knew that monarch’s sad story! A play about it had been performed in the Pacification Commissioner’s mansion. Most marvellous of all, she realised Emperor Huizong wore a familiar face: Wang Ting-bo’s!

But her master was displeased. As Lu Ying flew she understood it all. How disappointing the people were, how ungrateful!

A great royal pleasure park grew before her eyes. A Daoist monk had once told His Majesty that building the park would lead to many sons – and see! Babies, boys, youths, all trailing after their father.

Lu Ying fluttered between precious rocks and rare plants, a high hill constructed by thousands of labouring peasants.

Water cascaded down cliffs into a pool of serenity. Flocks of geese and ducks formed patterns to please His Highness and on the shore gibbons howled mournfully. All around the city people scurried through field and swamp, scrabbling in the earth for curiosities to grace the Son of Heaven’s park. Officials stood over them and flicked thin whips. Those offering nothing were beaten with bamboo sticks.

Now Lu Ying grew afraid. What had she to give? His Imperial Highness was frowning again. He had noticed her as she flew this way and that in distress. The horizon grew dark with the drumming of hooves, barbarians galloping towards Kaifeng. At once the city was ablaze.

Lu Ying groaned in her sleep. Sweat moistened her hair. Her dream shifted. . .

She was no longer an oriole, but a concubine weighed down by precious silks. The pleasure-ground lay in ruins, barbarian horses fed on the bodies of geese and plumed ducks, tearing at the gibbons’ fur with protruding yellow teeth. Wang Ting-bo cried out that he had been betrayed.

Again Lu Ying murmured as her dream changed. A grotesque cavalcade marched wearily across grassland stretching as far as one might see. Courtiers and eunuchs in splendid uniforms, young and old, wives and concubines, herded across the endless plains towards dishonour. Lu Ying realised she was the Emperor’s beloved First Wife. As they stumbled over the hard ground in thin slippers, horsemen selected the most beautiful of the ladies, dragging them into the grassland to satisfy unspeakable pleasures.

Suddenly a barbarian officer stood before them and Wang Ting-bo recoiled. She felt all her royal consort’s shame.

‘This is Heaven’s punishment!’ railed the officer. ‘You deserve what you have become!’

His Highness was trembling.

‘You have lost the Mandate of Heaven!’ jeered the officer.

What did the insolent barbarian want? But she knew. They both knew.

‘Do not be so miserly,’ continued their tormentor, in a sly voice. ‘Share what you have lost!’

Then rough hands dragged her away and Wang Ting-bo did not even protest. Indeed he smiled strangely.

‘Take her,’ he said. ‘I have plenty more.’

Lu Ying curled into a tight ball on the bed. The sweating man was on top of her, his breath reeking of garlic and wine.

He tore aside her silken clothes, revealing that triangle it was criminal to show. When he lay exhausted and panting, pressing her onto the hard earth, Lu Ying saw it was not a barbarian who had raped her. The man possessed Wang Ting-bo’s face.

He was gazing lasciviously, quite pleased with his conquest.

She sat upright, gripping the sheets in distress. For a moment she was in many places at once – on the unyielding soil – then a half-forgotten girl in the Pacification Commissioner’s mansion – and finally herself, in a room of hard shapes, a room of strange darkness. For a long while Lu Ying hugged her knees, until her heartbeat slowed.

Still half-asleep, she rose and stumbled from her bed. How close this room felt! It was suffocating her, night after night. No wonder her dreams were bad. She walked into the corridor and groped to a side-door. A simple desire to look at the moon’s sorrowful face led her outside.

The apricot tree stood as always, leaf and bough forming tangles of shadow. No one else was about.

Lu Ying breathed deeply, the night air slowly dispelling recollections of her dream. She settled on the bench beside the tree, a thick shawl round her shoulders. Dawn would come in a few hours.

She had heard all about the defeat outside the city walls.

Proud and ambitious, Wang Ting-bo’s feelings at such a reverse were predictable. . . but she did not like to think of him, not so near her dream.

Suddenly she grew alert. A tall, burly silhouette filled the gateway. She felt eyes upon her and glanced back at the safety of Dr Shih’s house. The man advanced through Apricot Corner Court into the moonlight. Her heartbeat quickened.

‘Captain Xiao,’ she said, faintly.

Guang halted a body’s length away, looking down at her. His face lacked the haughtiness of their previous meeting. He seemed troubled. She smelt wine on his breath and her hands instinctively pulled the shawl tighter, covering the line of bare, white soft skin where neck meets shoulder.

‘I had a terrible dream,’ she said, feeling a need to explain her presence in a public place so late at night. ‘I wanted. . .’

She gestured at the sleeping courtyard around them.

Unexpectedly, he did not reproach her, as he had the first time they met. All harshness seemed to have drained from his manner.

‘Then we are alike,’ he said. ‘I also came here seeking comfort.’

He remained standing before her as she sat on the long bench. Yet Lu Ying did not feel afraid.

‘I wanted to see how my brother is faring – and Madam Cao,’ he added.

His words were a little slurred. Lu Ying realised how absurd she must appear, lacking make-up or respectable clothes. In the moonlight and at such a time of danger, it did not seem important, as though ordinary rules of conduct had been set aside.

‘You were our city’s hero today,’ she said. ‘I’m sure everyone is grateful.’

‘Tonight Nancheng is full of widows and fatherless children,’ he said, with some of his former curtness. Lu Ying sensed he was ashamed of his failure to preserve more of their men and felt an unexpected desire to touch his arm – or be warmed by it. Instead, she shrank deeper into the bench.

‘I believe your brother is tending wounded soldiers at the Relief Bureau,’ she said. ‘Still, a light burns in Dr Shih’s shop, so I suspect his wife waits up for him. She usually does.’

Guang glanced over at the golden rectangle round the curtain.

‘Little Brother is lucky,’ he said. ‘He does his duty and someone waits for him to return.’

Again he looked at her doubtfully.

‘No one should meddle with that,’ he warned.

‘Madam Cao is a most respectable lady,’ said Lu Ying, blushing. Then she added: ‘I am not all bad, sir. However I appear, I am not all bad.’

‘Younger Brother deserves happiness,’ he muttered. ‘There has been too much suffering in our family.’

Part of her wondered at the implications of his words.

Perhaps the brothers had been talking. Power touched her with its familiar hunger. Why should she not be a wife, even to one as humble as Dr Shih?

‘Perhaps Captain Xiao desires a little tea?’ she suggested, to change the subject. Somehow she did not wish to consider Dr Shih right now.

Though truly, she had no idea how tea might be provided. Lu Ying realised she must learn how to make tea for visitors.

Except then she would be no better than Madam Cao.

Guang yawned and stretched. She watched his limbs carefully.

‘I am not thirsty,’ he said. ‘And I do not require ceremony in my own brother’s home. Here I am plain Eldest Brother, not Captain Xiao.’ He glanced at her. ‘Do you understand why?’

Lu Ying sensed she was being tested. Images of dull, formal exchanges in the palace, more ritual than conversation, crossed her mind. Oh, she understood the importance of a title or name! One’s whole destiny might be changed by a few words.

But Lu Ying did not know how to explain her thoughts, so she said: ‘Commander Yun Guang is very wise. I’m sure he knows the answer to his own question.’ Then she added:

‘Perhaps you might send word to Dr Shih that his wife is waiting for him? I’m sure it would comfort his labours in the Relief Bureau.’

How strange the world was! A few months ago she had not known such a lowly place existed. Now she used its name quite naturally. For the first time since they met, Guang smiled at her.

‘Goodnight,’ he said. ‘I will tell him myself. I have heard the Prefecture is sending a magistrate to inspect Water Basin Ward tomorrow. It would be sensible for Shih to greet him when he arrives. The official concerned has a certain reputation.’

After he had gone Lu Ying sat with the moon, her heart breathing new sensations. She forgot the horde encamped round the ramparts and even her dream, which had seemed so terrible.

*

‘Are we to be punished?’

Widow Mu’s querulous voice spoke for many in Apricot Corner Court. It was the next morning. All the courtyard’s residents except Lu Ying and Lord Yun were gathered round their guardian tree, united by neighbourliness – and its dangerous obligations. The laws of collective punishment were remorseless in siege-time. Unless, of course, one had influential relatives.

‘I heard the Sub-prefect who is to inspect us ordered beatings for several families when he inspected Xue Alley! Carpenter Xue received three strokes for not bowing to His Honour quick enough.’

No one disbelieved her. Half the world’s gossip flowed through her dumpling shop. That is, if one’s world was Water Basin Ward.

Dr Shih cleared his throat for silence. It felt uncomfortable that a woman should lead their talk. Besides, he had grievances against Widow Mu so delicate he barely acknowledged them to himself.

‘Madam,’ he warned.

At this the nervous virility of Apricot Corner Court stirred.

‘She speaks with the authority of a Dowager Empress!’ cried Old Hsu.

Everyone laughed at this new title except Widow Mu, who glared at the fan-maker.

Dr Shih’s position meant he must act like a father to the courtyard.

‘I advise you to resume your normal business until His Honour the Sub-prefect arrives,’ he said. ‘I shall stand watch by the gatehouse and Chung shall beat the gong when His Honour graces us.’

Cao shot him an approving smile as she withdrew. He was pleased to note that even Old Hsu trailed home. If anyone was likely to offend the authorities, it was the fan-maker.