Breaking Bamboo (54 page)

The midwife was unconcerned.

‘This is my nephew,’ she said. ‘I must go with him. The city is about to fall.’

‘You cannot leave us here!’ spluttered Lu Ying. ‘I order you!’

The midwife’s face contorted with dislike: ‘I do not take orders from
you
! Where is your former master now?’

With that she had gone, not even closing the street door. Lu Ying was left alone with Madam Cao, who was gripping the arms of her chair in a way that surely denoted an imminent birth. Panic gripped Lu Ying. As a girl, it was true, she often nursed her baby sisters, but Mother never allowed her near during the births. She had no idea what was required. In desperation, Lu Ying found the jug of medicine entrusted to her by Dr Shih and persuaded Cao to take a little – then had another large nip herself.

For a moment she hovered anxiously. Madam Cao doubled in pain. All her clothes were damp with sweat. Was that blood as well, seeping onto the towels? Lu Ying tried to recall how one should act. Perhaps one should do nothing at all. Then again, why else did one employ doctors and midwives? They must do
something
. This thought led to another. Of course!

She must locate a midwife until Dr Shih arrived home to take care of everything. That shouldn’t be so hard. Water Basin Ward teemed with children. Someone must have helped during all those births.

‘I shall return very soon,’ she assured Madam Cao. ‘Trust me! I shall be very soon.’

‘Do not leave me!’ wailed Cao, but Lu Ying had no choice –for both their sakes.

She hurried through Apricot Corner Court onto North Canal Street and looked around. All the stragglers and hurrying people had gone, hiding in whatever holes they could find.

Night unfurled banners of stars hidden by day. The Moon Goddess, almost full, shone fat and languid above the wooden rooftops of Nancheng. From the direction of the river – and Fouzhou – Lu Ying saw a distant glow and shadowy, winding columns of smoke.

As her eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom she became aware of three crouching figures around a willow beside North Canal. A woman had one arm round a teenage girl and the other around a small boy of ten or so. Then Lu Ying recognised them. For a moment she hesitated. Although Widow Mu was said to be a midwife, she was also the woman who had betrayed Old Hsu before the magistrate. Fortunately, Old Hsu’s widow was hiding at her sister’s house in a neighbouring ward.

Lu Ying shuffled across the dusty street on dainty slippers.

Three pairs of eyes watched her approach. The boy rose, fists balled defiantly, and she struggled to remember his name.

‘Little Melon,’ she said, in a moment of inspiration. ‘I must speak with your mother.’

The boy stepped aside and she nodded politely to Widow Mu, who remained on the ground hugging her daughter. The girl’s looks had deteriorated since her family’s ejection from Apricot Corner Court. There was a wild, almost disturbed quality in her doe-like eyes.

‘Widow Mu,’ Lu Ying began. ‘This is a fortunate meeting for us both.’

A distant cry of pain reached them from Dr Shih’s shop.

‘Madam Cao is giving birth,’ said Widow Mu. ‘We watched the midwife leave. That is why you wish to speak to me.’

Now Lu Ying was on safer ground.

‘Of course! And to offer you a generous payment for your services.’

She looked at the gaunt, emaciated figures of Little Melon and Lan Tien. Then her voice went hard, as it had in the old days when blackmailing servants to spy on her behalf: ‘Act as Madam Cao’s midwife until Dr Shih returns and your children will eat. Otherwise they will continue to starve. And another thing, I have no doubt Captain Xiao will punish you severely if you leave Madam Cao to suffer. As will I!’

Another forlorn cry from Apricot Corner Court made Lu Ying lean forward: ‘Choose now, you wretched woman! Not that you have a choice. And for goodness sake, wash before you present yourself to Madam Cao!’

Widow Mu bowed fearfully. It took a struggle for Lu Ying to re-construct a serene expression. Finally, she gave up. Really, it had been too trying a day. Snapping impatient fingers, she ushered Widow Mu towards Dr Shih’s shop.

As the birth progressed, Lu Ying found it increasingly distasteful and decided to stand outside, away from the noise and smells.

She had dispatched Little Melon to Dr Shih, urging him to return at once. As for Lan Tien, the strange girl refused to even enter Apricot Corner Court. She had seemed a good candidate for solving the unbearable aroma emanating from Lord Yun’s room, but when assigned the task began to weep, evidently afraid. So Lu Ying reluctantly allowed her to accompany her brother.

She stood in the dark courtyard. The moon rose high now.

Lu Ying felt her gaze drawn upwards. How the Moon Goddess smiled at their small concerns! Lu Ying understood exactly, for once she had imagined that when Wang Ting-bo named her as his new First Wife she would smile, just so, at the little people scurrying round the foot of Peacock Hill. A painful memory.

That desire, once so deeply felt, mocked what she had become.

Even the aspiration had been faulty.

For a moment Lu Ying wondered if she should hurry back inside Dr Shih’s shop and learn as much as she could about giving birth. Lu Ying froze. A man had pushed open the wooden gates of the courtyard. She recognised him and stepped forward:

‘Master Hsu!’ she called. ‘What is the news from the city?’

Old Hsu’s Son shook his head in distress.

‘Fouzhou is no more. Only the river lies between us and the enemy.’

She was left alone in the courtyard while he moved from room to room in his small house, gathering the few valuables they owned. It seemed tactful to conceal Widow Mu’s return to Apricot Corner Court in the honourable role of Madam Midwife.

Lu Ying listened to Cao’s cries seeping into the night from Dr Shih’s shop. For a moment she remembered Lord Yun lying in his own incontinence. Where was Dr Shih! Over half an hour had passed since her messengers left to fetch him.

She shivered and stared up at the moon once more. How gay the goddess looked. One might think she was smiling. A sad, pitying kind of smile, it was true. One might almost think the moonbeams were roads to the Jade Emperor’s Cloud Terrace.

Abruptly, Lu Ying’s thoughts were dragged back to earth.

If the Mongols stormed the city, how hungry they would be!

Two years of frustration and terrible losses would fan their revenge. It would not take long to parade every pretty girl in the streets, to establish a slave market. Everyone had heard about their cruelty. Worse things existed than death. One might suffer as Madam Cao did now, only not to bear a handsome child of the House of Yun whose ancestor was the great poet Yun Cai, but a hideous bastard impregnated through. . . she must not think of it.

Lu Ying realised she was shaking and hugged herself. Tears stung her soft cheeks. Sooner join the Moon Goddess than that! Sooner drown herself in North Canal and float like a beautiful lily pad, its flower forever open to the moon.

*

Dr Shih tried to keep pace with his colleague. The young man’s walk was more like a run. Moonlight cast a silver sheen across the Water Basin, as they followed the canal to the Water Gate of Morning Radiance.

‘Dr Du Tun-i!’ called out Shih. ‘Our duty lies back at the Bureau. Besides. . .’

He did not explain his ‘besides’ – that messages from Apricot Corner Court could hardly reach him if he was scampering through the streets of Water Basin Ward on a mission of doubtful benefit to anyone. However, Dr Du Tun-i was defiant.

‘I must see if the rumours are true. Please accompany me, Dr Shih. You are my father when I am in Nancheng,’

‘Very well,’ sighed Shih. ‘But we may leave our posts only for a few minutes.’

Dr Du Tun-i was already climbing the steep stairs leading to the ramparts above the Water Gate of Morning Radiance. At the top a sergeant of the Militia blocked their way, the same man who had given Madam Cao permission to grow herbs on the riverbank. A dozen other soldiers were staring north.

‘Dr Shih, go back!’ urged the man. ‘You should not see this.

Go back, sir.’

Dr Du Tun-i pushed past the man to the stone battlements.

There he went very still. Shih joined him and laid a hand on his shoulder.

From the high Water Gate one could clearly see Fouzhou across the moonlit river. It was a night of unusual beauty. The Han River glowed eerily like polished jade. The wrecks of sunken ships exposed by the drought cast strange shadows.

There was a gentle, constant murmur from the current.

Then one’s eye found the wharf-side of Fouzhou where a mound was being raised. Gangs of slaves, supervised by Mongols on foot and horse, were dragging wagons and handcarts to the small hill, their labours illuminated by huge bonfires. Sparks rose and drifted into the cloudless sky.

Whenever a cart reached the mound, slaves emptied its contents, spurred on by clubs and whips.

Still the mound grew higher. Wails and screams from Fouzhou drifted through the calm summer night. It seemed the rumours were true. General A-ku was making good his promise to put every living thing to the sword, including household animals. Shih swirled with nausea and terror. Despite the many, many deaths he had witnessed since becoming a doctor’s apprentice this was a different kind of dying. How many thousands were on the mound? It rose almost to the height of the battlements of Jasper Gate. How many corpses did that take?

‘Come away,’ Shih urged Dr Du Tun-i.

‘What if my family are dragged out!’ sobbed the young man.

‘Mother and Little Sister. . . I have heard A-ku has pledged to search every room in every house.’

He broke down. Dr Shih took the young man’s arm and led him down the steps. His own spirit felt a racing panic, a revulsion against men and what they will do to each other, for the sake of self-preservation, or ambition, or fear, or honour, or greed. He heard himself speaking as though someone else was using his voice: ‘I am sure your family are well hidden. We shall make an offering to Huang Ti Nei’s image. The Yellow Emperor will surely listen.’

They walked back to the North Medical Relief Bureau. At the entrance Shih recognised two figures crouching in the dusty street. He was too dazed by what he had seen to remember his grievances against their mother, so he ushered Mung Po over to help Dr Du Tun-i and blinked down at the children.

‘Little Melon? Lan Tien? Why are you here?’

The boy shot his sister an angry look, then grovelled at Shih’s feet. It distressed him to see the boy so wretchedly thin. As for Lan Tien, there was something odd about the girl, suggestive of madness rather than physical infirmity.

‘Forgive us!’ blurted out the boy. ‘I would have come sooner but
she
would not let me.’

Lan Tien scrabbled at her brother’s arm to silence him and Shih bent down beside them.

‘Children, have you been sent with a message?’

Then Little Melon rushed it out: how Lady Lu Ying had sent him to say that Madam Cao needed his help; that her labour was difficult and the midwife had deserted them. How Lan Tien had forced him not to come because she was afraid of being sent to Lord Yun. How, in the end, Little Melon had decided to defy his sister and had run here as fast as he could.

Shih flinched at Lord Yun’s name. He did not care to think how near he had come to striking Father. A memory of the Tower Room and the old man’s avid observations suggested the reason for Lan Tien’s fear.

‘When was this? How long ago?’

Lan Tien buried her head in her hands but Little Melon said stoutly: ‘I counted two hour bells, sir.’

Dr Shih rose, eyeing the children angrily. That delay might cost him either his wife or unborn child. And yet again his father’s mischief was the cause.

‘Mung Po!’ he bellowed. ‘Mung Po!’

*

Cao could barely glimpse the room for pain. When not screwed tight, her eyes swam with tears. Shadows swirled in the lamp and candlelight. Never had she imagined such pain – every inner place, every entrance and exit of her body, all burned and shrieked as though connected by scalding rivers or fiery chains.

And then, unexpectedly, the pain receded a little, enough for her to gasp a lungful of precious air. When her vision cleared she could see Widow Mu’s anxious face and hear her voice:

‘Roll the boulder, Madam Cao!’ she intoned. ‘Clasp and roll it!

Good! How well you are doing. Soon we shall see your son!’

Cao laughed hysterically at such a prospect. Mu had repeated the word ‘soon’ so many times over the last hour.

‘Where is Shih?’ she wailed, abruptly recalling his absence.

‘Why has he not come?’

Indeed a summons had been sent to the Relief Bureau at least an hour ago, carried by Little Melon and Lan Tien. As the next lucky earthquake gathered force, billowing out to shake her exhausted body, Cao suddenly cried out: ‘I hate him! He is still chasing that whore! Oh!
Oh!
’

Widow Mu squeezed her hand, while peering beneath the sheet she had placed over the arms of the birthing chair.

Suddenly her eyes opened wide.

‘Clasp the stone!’ she cried. ‘Madam Cao! Clasp the stone!

His head! Madam Cao, his head!’

Certainly more blood and fluid than before was dripping from the wooden chair to the earthen floor. As if through a haze of sound Cao distinctly heard screams of alarm on North Canal Street. They seemed to belong to another world, far away from this hot, dark well. Yet she could feel the child emerging, moment by moment, finger-breadth by finger.

‘Squeeze!’ cried Mu excitedly. ‘Now breathe! Breathe deeper,
deep
! Like this
aaaah
!’

Another lucky earthquake made Madam Cao moan out a stream of curses at her faithless husband.

‘His shoulders!’ cried Mu. ‘Here he comes!’

Then, preceded by a flow of blood and mucus, the baby slid into the midwife’s waiting hands.

Cao closed her eyes and tried to breathe. It would end now.

All that mattered was that it would end. Why then did her pain feel no less than before? Another wave was mounting, burning through her lower body.