The Mandate of Heaven (2 page)

A hot wind made the bamboo groves on Monkey Hat Hill whisper and slur. That night a wave of monsoon rolled in from the east, black clouds billowing inland, connecting Six-hundred-
li
Lake to the dark sky with rods of rain. A million tapping nails on roof tiles, scratching, trickling, trying to find gaps.

Yun Shu slept badly, her dreams invaded by Golden Lotus bending her feet until bones snapped like twigs.

At dawn, she twitched and curled into a ball. Some animal instinct deep within noted the night rain had slowed. Rosy light glowed through the soft skin of her closed eyelids, stirring fear and urgency.

Yun Shu sat up in bed and cried out. Any day, perhaps today, Golden Lotus would begin the binding. After that? A lifetime of wretched hobbling. Compelled by a sudden hope, Yun Shu dressed swiftly and crept out into gathering light, birdsong, scented flowers and wet, impressionable soil. Soon she reached a secret hole in the boundary wall of the splendid house and gardens occupied by Salt Minister Gui. Her hope lay somewhere far less respectable: Deng Mansions.

Deng Mansions adjoined Yun Shu’s home. It consisted of a large compound of courtyards and shabby wooden buildings surrounded by gardens wild as grass seed. Built on the same grand scale as the Salt Minister’s house, it was topped by similar ornate, upward-curving red tiles. However, its wooden walls and doors sagged and several ceilings had fallen in on themselves.

Positioned two-thirds up Monkey Hat Hill, Deng Mansions was one of a dozen houses formerly occupied by absurdly rich officials and merchants. That was before the Mongols put the entire city to the sword. Now, all the other great houses on the Hill were burned or abandoned. Only the Deng clan clung to their ancestral home. Monkey Hat Hill had gained a reputation for being cursed and few risked the taint of misfortune. As for Salt Minister Gui,
he
only lived there because no one was alive to charge him rent.

She found Hsiung and Teng in the weed-choked central courtyard. They stood side by side, emptying their bladders into a thorn bush, competing to see who could spray highest.

‘I win again!’ crowed Hsiung. He was tall and muscular for his age, whereas Teng’s thin limbs suggested delicacy. Both had shaved heads topped with small tufts of black hair.

‘I could eat a banquet,’ said Teng, yawning. ‘I bet we get millet for breakfast.’

Then they noticed her. Neither was embarrassed as they pulled up their breeches. They hardly considered her a girl at all.

‘Why are you here so early?’ asked Hsiung. Despite being a servant, he often spoke up before Teng, his master’s son.

Breathlessly, Yun Shu told her tale of betrothal and bound feet. They sat on a decaying wooden step like a huddle of geese.

‘My mother didn’t have bound feet,’ she concluded. ‘She was a doctor’s daughter from Nancheng. Mother told me my Grandfather called bound feet unnatural. If only she was still alive!’

‘How old were you when she died?’ asked Teng.

‘Five.’

‘My mother died seven years ago,’ he said, tonelessly. ‘Sometimes I see her ghost. Especially at night. But when I look again it’s just shadows. She’s never there.’

The children fell silent. Hsiung began to whack the earth with a stick.

‘I wouldn’t let any one crush
my
feet,’ he declared. ‘I want to be free to run wherever I like.’

Teng stirred. ‘We must all obey our Honoured Fathers. Confucius wrote …’

‘What if her father’s got it wrong?’ broke in Hsiung.

‘We should obey our parents especially if they are wrong,’ countered Teng. ‘Otherwise you’re wicked.’

‘I don’t want to hobble like a cripple all my life!’ cried Yun Shu.

The boys fell silent.

‘Will you help me?’ she asked. ‘You’re my only friends.’

Teng grew suddenly enthusiastic, as he often did when inspired by noble notions. ‘I know, let’s be Yun Shu’s
xia
! Her heroes! Hsiung, it’s just like that book I told you about. The hero saves the lady and she stabs herself because he won’t marry her!’

Hsiung liked the sound of that. They were interrupted by a voice inside the house: Teng’s father, Deng Nan-shi, wishing good morning to Lady Lu Si. Perpetually forlorn and annoying, Lady Lu Si was the Deng clan’s only other retainer, aside from Hsiung. Her position in the household was ambiguous, half honoured guest, half servant.

‘Golden Lotus and Father will be at Prince Arslan’s palace all day,’ said Yun Shu.

‘Meet us at the usual place in an hour,’ offered Teng. ‘Hsiung, we must remember to take our bamboo swords.’

Yun Shu escaped from the overgrown courtyard moments before Deng Nan-shi emerged into the sunlight with Lady Lu Si to receive his tiny household’s morning bows.

The two boys pushed through gardens choked with common shrubs where once rare orchids and dwarf trees bloomed. They reached the lofty brick wall dividing Salt Minister Gui’s compound from Deng Mansions and scrambled nimbly to the top. Yun Shu waited on a stone bench beside a pool of anaemic carp. She glanced anxiously back at her home as the boys’ faces bobbed over the wall.

‘Yun Shu!’ called Teng, softly.

With a final backward glance, she grabbed their outstretched hands and was hauled over the wall.

Monkey Hat Hill formed a wooded headland jutting out into Six-hundred-
li
Lake. High cliffs lined the headland so the lake waters lapped against boulders and sheer, vine-clad limestone precipices, home to nesting birds and troupes of silver-backed apes. It was here, amidst grassy lanes and ruined mansions, that the three friends usually played. Today, however, they had a new place.

Deep in the woods crowning Monkey Hat Hill, Teng had discovered the remains of a stone watchtower. He led them past Cloud Abode Monastery into the bamboo groves; they climbed steep paths until they caught sight of shattered stone defences poking through thickets. A family of apes shrieked and leapt at the children’s approach.

The tower teetered on the cliff as though it might crumble over any moment. Dense bushes with glossy leaves and tight fists of pink blossom partially concealed the walls.

Much prodding with Hsiung’s bamboo sword revealed an opening through the thick, ancient wall. Without hesitating, he wriggled into the narrow gap. Yun Shu went next, eager to prove she was brave as any boy. Teng adjusted his ragged scholar’s robes and followed, warning everyone to be careful. Inside the children found an abandoned world.

The square interior was littered with scattered bones, mottled and cracked. Teng counted nineteen skulls. He picked up a shinbone, squeezing speculatively. Its softness reminded him of other bones he knew dated back to the Great Sacrifice. Perhaps these people had hidden in the tower, praying the Mongols would not find them … A sudden noise startled the children. Bird wings clattered.

‘What do you think?’ asked Teng. ‘We could make it our Prefect’s Residence.’

Hsiung stirred uneasily. ‘Too many
bones
,’ he declared, stamping on a rib cage. It cracked loudly like old twigs.

‘Don’t!’ whispered Teng, fearfully. ‘We must treat them with honour.’

Hsiung’s sandal hovered over a skull. Reluctantly, he lowered it to the ground.

‘Let’s throw them over the cliff into the lake,’ he said, ‘otherwise it’s their place, not ours. Anyway, something’s been gnawing this one. And the walls stink of foxes or wild dogs.’

Foxes! Yun Shu glanced from face to face. Her own flushed with exhilaration to be out on an adventure.

‘We should lay their souls to rest properly. With a
rite
,’ said Teng, using a favourite word of his father’s.

‘You’ll never bury them all,’ said Hsiung, referring to Teng’s crazy vow to make Monkey Hat Hill safe from hungry ghosts by burying decently all who had perished in the Great Sacrifice, nearly thirty years earlier. Otherwise, Teng argued, their spirits would roam forever, causing mischief to the living and – though he never mentioned it – especially to the Deng clan. Or what little remained of it. After all, his own grandfather, Prefect Deng, had issued the insane order that condemned the city to death.

‘What do you know about
rites
?’ jeered Hsiung.

‘My father is a scholar of high purpose,’ replied Teng, loftily. ‘We Dengs know all about things like that.’

Hsiung fell silent, abashed by his friend’s confidence. Teng’s forehead furrowed. Yun Shu wondered what he would do. Then Teng chanted an ancient poem composed by Emperor Wu – one of a great many taught to him by his father – and scattered leaves and pink blossom over the bones:

Autumn wind rises,
    
Plump clouds burn,
Pine, bamboo, plum tree wither,
    
Geese fly south and north.

Yun Shu picked up the words. Her high, solemn voice joined Teng’s while Hsiung watched, grinning. Wind made the bamboo groves on Monkey Hat Hill whisper and nod as though in approval. In the distance, snow-capped mountains glimmered.

Everything was quickening on Monkey Hat Hill that day: sprays of bamboo, the feathers of young birds, water bubbling and trickling over stony streambeds. Yun Shu’s fate, too, rushed towards her.

Late in the afternoon she returned from the watchtower to find a slender figure in the doorway of her bedchamber.

‘Golden Lotus!’ she gasped, breathless from running. ‘You’re back early.’

Whether by accident or design she did not kneel or even bow. His plucked, crescent-moon eyebrows rose a little.

‘Where have you been?’

Gripped by sudden defiance, Yun Shu replied: ‘I ran to the cliff and looked out across the lake and over the rooftops of the city. I saw mountains where the holy men live and I looked right across the lake,
right across
!’

They regarded one another.

‘A lady never runs,’ said Golden Lotus, suspiciously. ‘That’s what servants are for. Come with me.’

Salt Minister Gui’s mansion had many unused rooms and corridors. Golden Lotus led her to a part of the house rarely visited except by rats and beetles. Here the chambers were thick with cobwebs and dust, lacking furniture or purpose.

One room in the centre of this maze had been transformed, its floor swept and walls washed. Two chairs had been set up, as well as a footstool and low table. On the latter sat a plain wooden box. A large bowl of clean water stood against one wall. On the opposite side was another bowl. Yun Shu detected a liverish, metallic odour in the room.

‘Sit down,’ commanded Golden Lotus, indicating the taller of the two chairs. ‘Take off your shoes.’

‘Please!’ she cried. ‘I promise not to tell Father if you pretend it didn’t work!’

Golden Lotus shuffled over so his painted mouth was inches from her face. She trembled before his unflinching stare.

‘I shall not pretend,’ he said, forcing her onto the chair. When she tried to rise he slapped her face. ‘And it will work!’ he added.

Yun Shu hugged herself, tears running down her cheeks.

‘I’ll run away!’ she cried.

‘If you do I’ll have you beaten and starved. And I’ll make your lotus feet
three
inches long, not
four
!’

She subsided at this prospect.

‘That’s better,’ he said, ‘now sit still.’

Golden Lotus carried over the basin. The girl recoiled from its shiny, crimson surface. It was full of blood and herbs.

‘Lift your feet. Lower them in gently.’

‘But it’s
blood
!’

‘Of course, stupid girl! It will protect you from sickness. See how I take care of you.’

He knelt and forced her feet to soak in the concoction. Meanwhile, he fussed over an endless bandage. The liquid tickled at first but, after a while, the girl’s heartbeat slowed: this was not so bad. He bent over the box and produced a tiny razor. Her terror returned. Did he mean to cut off her toes?

‘Your left foot,’ he commanded, ‘then your right.’

Once the nails had been pared to the quick, he instructed Yun Shu to soak her feet again. They sat in silence. All the words never spoken or shared between them filled the bare room with loss. Her heart beat so fast she found it hard to breathe.

‘Do you know how old I was when my feet were bound?’ asked Golden Lotus.