Taming Poison Dragons (53 page)

Instead we entered the courtyard and silently watched four or five young men, gathered around her as she lolled on the low wall of the fishpond. Several were painting her portrait as she reclined. One by one they became aware of us and their brushes went still.

Su Lin’s eyes met mine. Her expression passed rapidly from surprise to alarm.

‘Yun Cai!’ she cried, rising hurriedly.

The gaily-dressed young men rose with her in a loud rustle of silks. Her voice faltered. I examined my rivals and they returned my gaze curiously. Everyone knew about the trial of Lord Xiao and my own part in it.

‘How remiss of me, gentlemen!’ she cried. ‘It quite fled my mind that the Honourable Yun Cai had arranged to visit me today! I must beg your deepest pardon, gentlemen, for I fear your delightful portraits must wait until another day.’

They muttered amongst themselves. No doubt they had paid for her company with splendid gifts. They left after several pretty speeches and I found myself alone with her.

Mi Feng withdrew to the shadows. She stepped forward eagerly. I could see golden carp swimming in the fishpond behind her as we talked.

‘Have they reached a verdict. . . Yun Cai, are you safe?’

She was trembling.

‘For now I am quite safe. The verdict is still not known.’

‘But what of Lord. . .’

She hesitated before naming him.

‘We can speak Lord Xiao’s name if we like,’ I said. ‘It will hardly offend the judges. Sit down beside me, Su Lin, you make me nervous standing there.’

We sat beside the fishpond and I explained all that had happened: my night on the roof of the Temple of Flying Petals; how I had barely escaped torture as a consequence of my testimony at Lord Xiao’s trial. Even as I spoke I sensed something base behind my words. I wanted her to feel an obligation to love me.

‘You have suffered,’ she said. ‘Poor Yun Cai!’

And that was my reward: pity.

‘I came here,’ I said. ‘Not just for the pleasure of your company.’

For the first time in the long years we had danced around each other conversation failed us. Perhaps she anticipated what I would ask. Silence grew like a shadow.

‘I need to know where I stand,’ I said. ‘Surely that is natural.’

‘Of course!’ she cried, with brittle gaiety.

I longed for her to reach out, enfold me in her arms. Yet her hands lay modestly on her lap. When I looked into her face I noticed the first signs of tiny lines round her eyes. It was a guarded face. She seemed almost afraid. So I tried again.

‘Are your feelings unchanged?’ I asked. ‘That is why I have risked coming here. Because I must know how deeply you love me.’

She reached to her broad girdle for a fan to flutter, but none hung there.

‘I am happy,’ she said, with false brightness. ‘It is kind of you to enquire.’

‘Su Lin, you speak so strangely! Is something wrong?

That does not answer my question.’

To my surprise, she stood up and stared mournfully into the pond of golden, circling carp.

‘How hard this is,’ she said. ‘You really shouldn’t have come like this. I do not know how to answer. You see, my feelings are one thing, my situation quite another. Everything has happened so fast! Things I did not anticipate.’

I waited for her to say more. Her words were a kind of destiny, one I had long foreseen. For the last year, Su Lin had been the foremost singing girl in the capital, an object of universal admiration. She had become the season’s brightest ornament and the whole giddy world of the rich and idle lived for such fashions. This was her hour, a time I could not share. No doubt she understood better than I that she must reap while she could before a younger woman supplanted her. It had always been thus. And so I believed that I might offer her a future.

‘Su Lin,’ I said. ‘Will you marry me? It is time to banish the uncertainty between us.’

Her hand flew to her mouth. It was as though I had struck her across the face.

‘Oh, Yun Cai,’ she whispered.

‘I wish you to become my wife,’ I said, stoutly. ‘Let all the demons in hell take the consequences!’

‘Your father would never approve. This is. . . You have not thought through what you are saying.’

I shook my head.

‘I know exactly what I am saying. We shall find a way to live and have many sons to make us proud. My father will learn to respect you for what you are. Who could do otherwise? Marry me, Su Lin, and I promise you my affection will not wane until the day I die. And that is worth more than a fine house or clothes. Love is the finest house imaginable and its rooms are never bare.’

I knew it must be so. Our children seemed something destined. I knew we would be contented together. She stood, her head downcast.

‘Oh, Yun Cai,’ she repeated.

‘Then you agree?’ I asked, eagerly. ‘We will live in the country if necessary, and all our neighbours will envy us.’

Still she stood silently.

‘Why do you not speak?’ I asked.

Her kohl-lined eyes were wet with tears.

‘I cannot agree to this,’ she said. ‘It is more tangled than you imagine. His August Excellency has. . . No, I cannot agree.’

That man’s name was like a cuff to my forehead.

‘He is an old, avaricious goat!’ I cried. ‘He has nothing to do with us! Marry me and be happy.’

She shook her head miserably.

‘I am honoured. You cannot imagine how I am honoured. But I dare not live the life of a poor woman. I have always wanted more. Yet I want to say yes with all my heart!’

A minute passed. We were too distressed to speak.

‘And it is not so easy to dismiss His August Excellency as you believe,’ she continued. ‘I sometimes fear he has grown too fond of me, and then I’m afraid.’

Now in my desperation I laughed scornfully.

‘Pay him no regard, I beg you.’

‘But I must! It is not so. . . And there is more. You see, if I carry on as I am for a few more seasons, I could offer you a dowry. I could sell this house, even some of my jewels and silks. We might leave the capital together, live as man and wife. But dearest Yun Cai, do not ask me to become poor or ordinary. I have known poverty. You must not ask that.’

‘When I pass the Imperial examinations,’ I said, stoutly,

‘we will live on my salary, however humble at first, until I am promoted. Then I will earn enough for you to fill whole carriages with jade!’

‘If you anger His August Excellency there shall be no promotion,’ she countered. ‘Is he not your sponsor in the examinations?’

‘Then he must smile benignly upon us,’ I retorted. ‘And send a wedding gift.’

‘He frightens me sometimes,’ she said, as though thinking aloud. ‘More than Lord Xiao did. He reminds me of the broker who. . . but that is foolishness. He is quite, quite kind. And noble, too.’

I took her soft hands in my own and lifted them to my lips.

‘I know you too well, Su Lin,’ I said, rising. ‘You could not be happy without love. And I have proved myself a thousand times over in that regard.’

She nodded unhappily, and I left with what dignity I could muster. Her sobs followed me to the door. How I raged inside to prove myself worthy of her devotion! They say that the man in the moon ties a magical and invisible red thread around the ankles of all newborn girls and boys. When they grow up, that thread draws them closer, closer and, should they meet, marriage is inevitable. I believed that red thread tied Su Lin to me.

Mi Feng followed at a trot as I swept out of Su Lin’s house. He had too great a regard for my dignity to discuss what had happened. If Lord Xiao’s assassins had accosted us then, I would have gladly fought. Such contests are simple. One falls or walks away. But my struggle for Su Lin’s love had disarmed me completely.

How does one subdue one’s own heart? I could almost feel the man in the moon’s red thread dragging our ankles together.

When I was a boy, a plum tree stood in the small orchard at the back of Three-Step-House. A twisted, wizened kind of tree. No one knew its age for sure. Instead of branches heavy with fruit, it blossomed reluctantly, producing a mere hatful of plums each season. Yet of all the trees in the orchard I longed for it to surprise us, to bring forth a miraculous crop. Year after year I waited. Then, one autumn, my games with Little Wudi took me to the orchard and I found the plum tree on its side. Father had decided it was no good. Now it was firewood. When I protested to the servant who stood beside it, axe in hand, he laughed.

‘Why waste good soil, Little Master? No one likes sour plums.’

Was Lord Xiao a waste of good soil? Certainly he had borne fine, healthy fruit for the Son of Heaven in his younger days. Is a man’s early good cancelled by later failure? The philosopher Shao Yung used plum-blossom to foretell human fate. But no one could have foretold Lord Xiao’s destiny, least of all himself.

I was dreaming of that plum tree at dawn, when Mi Feng’s gruff voice stirred me.

‘You have a visitor,’ he said, urgently. ‘He says you must dress in your very best clothes.’

I could not shake the plum tree from my sleepy mind.

Somehow, in the strange way of dreams, I thought of Su Lin.

‘You must hurry,’ he said.

‘Have they come for me?’ I asked.

But he did not reply.

P’ei Ti was waiting in the courtyard, among a crowd of blood-spattered butchers. Like them, he was bolting down a large cup of wine. Unlike them, he wore a fine uniform.

A strange smile played across his lips, as though he relished the absurdity of being seen in so low a haunt. I fastened my broad silken girdle hastily.

‘Did you expect soldiers to arrest you?’ he asked. ‘Well, it’s only me. The time for such fears is past.’

I looked at him sharply.

‘Do you mean . . ?’

‘After winter the fruit appears,’ he intoned.

This reference to my dream startled me. It was as though he had turned sorcerer.

‘Why do you mention it?’ I asked.

He looked puzzled.

‘No reason. It is just a saying. Surely you have heard it before.’

But I thought of the Blossom God and the Temple of Flying Petals.

‘You have come here to tell me I am reborn,’ I muttered, in amazement.

‘How obscurely you speak, Yun Cai! But yes, in a sense, that is why I have come. And to take you to witness something none of us dared expect. My carriage is waiting on the Imperial Way. We must hurry.’

Once we were seated and jolting in the direction of the Palace, he told his story. Perhaps I had been reborn. For, as I had sensed when a prisoner in the temple, to be reborn required a death. His was a story soon told. Lord Xiao had been found guilty of a capital crime and his execution was scheduled for that very morning.

‘You are mistaken,’ I said. ‘A great man like Lord Xiao. . . One would expect banishment, certainly deep disgrace, but not execution. You must be mistaken.’

P’ei Ti shrugged.

‘There are precedents,’ he said.

‘Was his crime so great?’

‘He embezzled a great revenue from Chi Province intended to finance the very war he supported. And all to maintain his wife’s pretensions! And his own, of course, one can hardly blame her for everything.’

‘So the scrolls were the key to his downfall,’ I said.

‘Partly the scrolls,’ replied P’ei Ti. ‘But I suspect his fall may be attributed to backing the wrong party in court.

You see, ever since the Kin Emperor’s capture of Pinang, the Son of Heaven has turned his back on the policy of trying to regain our lost lands. As you know, Lord Xiao was the foremost advocate of that policy. So I read his execution as a kind of warning. Times have changed, and all our opinions must change accordingly.’

We entered the district near the palace. Hundreds of officials in their uniforms, from lowly clerks to Prefects in gilded carriages were travelling the same way.

‘There is another reason, of course,’ said P’ei Ti. ‘The current famine is the worst for thirty years. The people are angry, and Lord Xiao’s policy of efficient taxation has ruined countless peasants. By holding up the Finance Minister’s head for all to see, the Son of Heaven is demonstrating that he feels for the people’s sufferings.’

‘Beheading Lord Xiao will not fill a single belly,’ I said.

‘Perhaps,’ he replied. ‘There is one final point.

Tomorrow is the day of the Imperial Examinations. By executing Lord Xiao today His Majesty sends out a strong signal concerning the probity he expects from all his officials, even the very highest.’

‘I see. You still have not explained where we are going.’

‘Isn’t that obvious? To the palace.’

‘But why?’

‘So you shall witness with your own eyes that your bad dream is over.’

An hour later we found ourselves in a great courtyard before the Temple of Inextinguishable Light amidst a crowd of officials, thousands strong. I thought then of Father’s orchard above Three-Step-House at blossom time. So many gorgeous, resplendent uniforms! Every colour in the Empire, turquoise and pink, yellow and green jade.

A huge eunuch in white robes led Lord Xiao to the block. From our position in the crowd I could not see his expression. I was glad of that. I later heard he died calling for the Son of Heaven to live a thousand years. Perhaps his death brought some good to the Empire, though I am not convinced. In truth, nearly every tree in that orchard bore sour plums and corruption did not end with him.

Over my long lifetime, it has grown ever more blatant.

Yet I was rid of Lord Xiao’s spite! I need no longer fear a powerful man’s malice. Su Lin and I were free to marry and be happy, for now I might even regain my former position. I had received a letter from her the previous evening and gained great reassurance from it. She wrote:
Dearest Incorrigible Friend,

You must believe that I am thinking and striving to
find a means so we can live together in dignity and
comfort. I beg you to ignore malicious rumours.

Wait for me to contact you when I have more definite news. I enclose an amulet to bring you luck in
the examination. It seems you and I have been
sharing doorsteps – and jetties – for as long as I can
remember. We have also shared our dreams.