by Oliver EADE
“Never asked. Hush. get down! That guard might spot us. Mistake you for a monkey, perhaps!”
The boys prostrated themselves then crawled backwards from the brow of the hill. The guard’s attention was diverted and he disappeared into the nearest tent. “What we do is this,” whispered Jinjin. “I go straight up to the fat guy with the funny helmet...”
“You’re joking! Do you think he’s a general?”
“Haven’t a clue. Looks important, though. We’ll do better going to the top fellow here. It’s the underlings who’ll give us a hard time. Use us for chopping practice! But watch your tongue!”
“Chopping practice?”
“Heads! Choppity-chop! Particularly empty ones like yours.” Jinjin observed fear pale his companion’s face. “Don’t worry,” he added. “Jinjin could talk his way out of a grave if he had to!”
“What are you going to say? Give me a girl called Xiaopeng, please?”
“You’ve no imagination, Kong! Stay close, watch me and don’t say a word. Remember, you’re mute! Got it? Or I really will cut out your tongue.”
They scrambled down the slope, Jinjin in the lead, and were spotted by a guard who lowered his spear on their approach. Kong froze but Jinjin continued to stride boldly up to the warrior. Clasping his right hand over his left, ensuring the White Tiger tattoo was clearly visible, he gave the puzzled guard a short bow as he’d often observed others do at Wong’s inn, low enough to show he recognised the man’s authority, but shallow enough to indicate his own superior standing. He watched the man’s eyes fix on his fist then falter. Jinjin’s memory had never yet failed him, but for a few awful moments he wondered whether he’d got the tail of the tiger wrong. Should it have been more flicked up at the end? Could he have been that careless in detail? He gave a further bow, a little lower, shaking his cupped fist up and down to blur the image of the beast.
“I come with a warning for the leader of the forces of the intended emperor,” he announced. ‘Intended’ seemed the correct word.
As he stood waiting, his eager, bright eyes settled upon the glazed face of the guard whilst an inner voice questioned why he’d ever got mixed up in something so outside his control, teasing him to turn and run back up the hill. But the point of the man’s spear would have had no difficulty finding his heart through his back; also, the imagined face of the teacher’s daughter - a face that haunted his every waking moment - was there on an imagined pillow of love, not a hand’s breadth from his, her naked breasts soft against his bared chest.
“Will you take me to his general or should I arrange for your head to be displayed on that spear of yours?” cautioned Jinjin, spurred on by mental breasts to bravery beyond madness. Uncertainty displaced the glaze in the eyes of the warrior. He shifted his spear to the other hand.
“Your business, young fool?” he demanded.
“Now d’you think I’d be telling a dressed-up peasant?”
Jinjin, who could perfectly mimic the voice of an official, knew from the man’s accent that’s all he was.
“What about him?” the soldier asked, nodding at the other boy, statue-still, further up the hill.
“A mute! Carries my documents. Can’t write, so no risk to us if the present emperor’s pigs capture him, huh?”
A smile curled the soldier’s lips as he lowered his weapon.
“Pigs! You’re right there. The bastards killed my father when he refused to give up all the grain he had that year of the drought. The emper-or’s got no control over his pigs. Only cares about painting birds and flowers, some say. How can any man respect an emperor like that?”
Paint her! That’s what I’ll do. Paint my flower, breasts included, and keep the picture hidden till I see her for real!
“How, indeed?” agreed Jinjin. “And the pigs are still in Chang’an snuffling out so-called traitors, the very men who would save China from her real enemies. But perhaps the White Tiger League could do with a few pigs of its own, ay? Sniff out traitors of the intended emperor.”
The soldier frowned and Jinjin grinned, realising the man now felt himself slipping dangerously close to his intellectual limit.
“You mean.?”
“Let’s say I’ve information that should concern he who would next sit upon the dragon throne. Back there’s your pig!”
The soldier gazed at the boy on the slope, failing to notice Jinjin’s trembling hands and shaking knees.
“This way,” he said at last.
Jinjin beckoned to Kong who followed at a distance as he was led to the high-helmeted man. His confidence gradually returned when he tried to imagine himself back at Wong’s inn in Houzicheng and the general yet another of those passing officials wary of all men behind their backs. The boy’s gift with words was his only weapon but to raise the spectre of doubt was a strategy he’d seen reap rewards on the verbal battlefield of Wong’s place.
He bowed twice the depth he’d offered the guard, turning to ensure, with a nod, that Kong copied him. The other boy’s head nearly touched his knees. The guard tried to explain the boys’ unsolicited presence but a flick of a wrist from the general silenced him.
Although short, General Ma was an imposing man assisted in height by his tall helmet. His well-trimmed, short black beard and moustache seemed out of keeping with the girlish heaven-tickling plumage topping the helmet. Lurking behind unblinking, knife-cut slits, a pair of steel eyes studied Jinjin with the aloofness of a god who had little time to spare for mortal affairs. One hand rested on the hilt of a heavy sword hanging from his waist.
Instinct caused the boy to drop to his knees and elbows. Leaning forwards, he pressed his face onto the ground.
“Most esteemed general,” he began, spluttering into the dirt. “I have.”
Speech abandoned him when the general erupted into a series of hoarse guffaws. He expected his head to be instantly detached from his body.
“Stop grovelling, you young monkey! Life’s too short for formalities. Yours, anyway! Stand up if you’ve something to tell me. And make it snappy.”
Jinjin stood and tried to remember the words he was about use before fear had wiped his mind clean.
“Wait a minute, you’re little more than a child. Barely off your mother’s breast - and yet a White Tiger Trader?”
Suspicion hovered from behind those eye slits.
“I. I was put to work at an inn in Houzicheng, most esteemed defender of our ancestors’ glorious land. To find out things for the League of White Tigers. Which I did. At the command of Merchant Chang.”
Lying was a novel experience for the boy and he rather enjoyed the way it gave freedom to his imagination.
“Chang? Never heard of him! Look I’ll soon have a war to get on with. D’you know what that means? Pfff! You civilians! Find out things indeed! Money and Miao girls is all we need now - and the luck of the White Tiger of the West. They just brought in the last three girls so nothing can stand in our way. When the monks have done their bit.”
“Monks?” interrupted Jinjin. Pricked by curiosity, he needed to know how monks fitted into the story.
“Securing the monasteries for us. With the help of you lot. Warnings to their sun wu kongs. Hey... who is this Merchant Chang, anyway?”
The slit eyes seemed to focus on Jinjin’s tattooed hand and the boy prayed his memory of the tiger had served him well.
“Murdered!” he replied quickly.
“Murdered? A true White Tiger trader? Not an imperial devil in disguise? And by whom?”
“That’s what I intend to find out.” The boy glanced back at Kong who was still lying face down. “My servant’s mute and can’t write so he’s no danger to us but...” He cast a glance in the direction of the soldier standing rigid beside him.
The general seemed to waiver for a brief moment as he studied the bold
young urchin, then burst into laughter.
“Leave us!” he commanded his underling. “If a child could kill the great General Ma, why, I’d no longer deserve to command our new emperor’s forces! Ha ha ha!”
With a hand far too large for his short body, he brusquely pushed aside the guard before the man had a chance to take his leave and display the respect due to the man heading an army that spilled across the plain as far as the mountains that formed nature’s barrier to the imperial city; an army easily capable of wiping out the emperor’s forces.
Hills to the south and west and mountains to the north...
Jinjin made a mental note of the camp lay-out.
“The man who just arrived with those last three girls,” he said quietly. “He’s called Chen Jiabiao.”
He observed the general’s body language for the eye slits told him nothing. The man’s hand opened and closed over the hilt of his sword. Jinjin knew something was wrong.
“What is this impudence? D’you think I don’t know Nobleman Chen? Why, he provides us with girls by the village-full! If you’re suggesting...”
“We trailed him. All the way from Houzicheng. My teacher at the inn there warned me. About Chang’s murder. and Chen’s part in it. The merchant was onto him, you see. Had to be eliminated, I suppose.”
“Onto him? For what reason?”
Jinjin knew this man could not afford to put a foot wrong; he was listening.
“I think we should talk somewhere more private,” was the boy’s answer. He had to somehow alter the flow of words. He should be the listener, not the other way around. Nevertheless, lying was beginning to flow more freely. Perhaps he might turn the whole exercise into a game of chess as he’d seen men play at Wong’s. He’d watched so much Chinese chess he considered himself an expert, although he’d never yet played his own hand. What he said would depend on the general’s words; how he said it could influence the other man’s words.
“Over there,” indicated the general, nodding at the longest tent. “I’ve chosen the tent with the prettiest ones - not that I can make much use of my own jade stem.” He squinted mischief at Jinjin through those narrowed eye slits. “If only, huh? Had a girl, yet, little monkey? Seem too much of a puppy to me!”
Jinjin said nothing as he walked with the general to his tent, Kong keeping a respectable distance behind them. It was painfully true. He knew nothing about girls, but his time would come, and with the most beautiful girl in China. Then the general and others - those ignorant drinking companions at Wong’s inn - they’d no longer laugh at him. He, Jinjin would become Lord of the Jade Stem [16]. It’s what this whole business was about, proving his worth to the teacher, allowing him no reason to give up the beautiful child to some worthless village idiot. The boy was beginning to see sense in the plan of the empress’s nephew and to understand how dominion over the yin would set free the qi force of his yang. Having renounced all connection with his father, family name included, he would soon have the qi of a man of means and importance. Even General Ma would be forced to bow low to him.
As soon as they entered the long tent, the sweet, heady scent of virgins enveloped him. At Wong’s place, the occasional presence of a young woman, usually a whore, would lighten his heart whilst her smell, as he served her, would excite that part of him that now stirred at the mere thought of the girl’s name: ‘Feier’. But here, in a tent full of girls, most untouched by men - forty, fifty, maybe more - his lungs could barely get enough of the air caressed by their virgin bodies. Why there should be such a strong fragrance about the Miao girls, he had no idea, nor did he care whether it was the oils and perfumes with which they adorned themselves, or whether, like flowers, they radiated some sort of intoxicating nectar to trap the unwary yang. He only wished to stand and allow its allure to play with his nostrils. The general sensed his confusion as his eyes flitted from one pretty face to another along a row of passive, reclining, silk-clad maidens.
“Now that is one thing you should never do, little monkey-come-tiger cub! Stare so! Either pass them by or take one for sport. But try that and the new emperor will feed you to the pigs! Mind you, that young one over there.”
He pointed to a particularly enchanting, shy girl whose timid, questioning, tear-stained eyes seemed to implore Jinjin to release her from torment.
“She comes from the other side of Houzicheng. Weeps for her baba every night. Why are these girls so stupid, huh? With a face like hers, she’ll be one of the first to be entered by the new man, yet still she cries out for the mean-minded, miserable peasant who just happened to sire her! I simply do not understand women! I would understand you, though, should you make a grab for her... but please don’t try. For some strange reason I like you and would hate to be the one to remove your head! Ha ha! Not before you’ve told me the truth, anyway!”
“At least tell me her name. So I can say it in bed when I’m. erm... you know,” implored Jinjin, feeling bolder. The general laid his broad hand on Jinjin’s shoulder.
“What I really like about you, boy, is your total lack of fear. I can teach a soldier how to fight, but I can’t tell his knees to stop trembling in battle. Remind me to test you with the sword, ay? We need men of courage!”
“What’s her name? The one who cries for her father.”
“That one? Oh, they all have new names. Flowers, of course. But,” he chuckled, “I know her old name because she cries it out every night when she weeps for her baba. ‘Your little Xiaopeng is here, baba! Please take me home. Please. please!’ If I wasn’t a soldier it might make me weep myself to hear her, but as it is. well, just makes me grow bigger where it matters, see?”
He stood legs astride and looked wistfully down at his crutch before again bursting into laughter. Jinjin, meanwhile, made a mental note of the unhappy girl’s face. Pretty, for sure, but her eyes were dulled not only by fear but by stupidity. Placed beside the teacher’s daughter she’d hold no more interest for him than would a young cow.
***
A cock crowed. Knowing how the crowing of the cock might ward off evil spirits, Feng kept his eyes firmly closed. To hear it once, his fortune might change; twice, and his head should remain on his shoulders long enough to see Feier again; thrice and she would be unharmed, but five times and luck would finally come his way. Because of his friend, the sun wu kong, this Master Tsu could arrange audience with the emperor. Chang’s murderer and Xiaopeng’s abductors would be brought to justice, the Dragon Throne saved and he, a humble village teacher, would be handsomely rewarded. Perhaps Feier might be wedded to a high-ranking court official and allowed to pursue her desire for learning with the emperor’s own teachers.
The cock only crowed once. It was another sound, the sound of a measured breathing that caused the teacher to open his eyes. On the floor, at the open door, the old monk sat in lotus position, hands pressed together in prayer and drawing in deep breaths, each time allowing a long sibilant escape of air through those brown-stained teeth that sounded like the hiss of a dying snake. Then the chanting began, a low-pitched monotonous drone, and with it the still figure of the monk became a barrier between Feng and the outside world where things happened. a friend murdered, girls stolen and Feier held hostage, little Feier whose fate hung in a balance only he could tip.
The noise unnerved him, but interruption on his part seemed a violation. Ever since Feier had rushed into his schoolroom to tell him about the body near the lotus lake, the teacher had been driven only by anger, despair and guilt. Not even a near fatal blow to the back of his head, nor scarification of his belly, had deflected him from the urge to set right the wrongs of the past. Blinkered against the truth, he’d failed to question himself about the real purpose behind the insane path he’d chosen both for himself and Feier. Now, walled off from that world by a chanting monk, he felt anger leach from his mind like mud from the legs of a water buffalo in a fast flowing stream;
not only anger, but also self-pity and guilt seemed cleansed by the sound. His body, soul and the very kernel of existence of all things hovered, suspended in that unearthly drone, but the strangest thing was a feeling of togetherness, not solitude. Out there beyond the monk he’d been alone, like a furious bee flitting from flower to flower to honey-pot, and searching, questioning, unable to trust in anyone or anything. Here, none of this seemed to matter. Heaven and Earth knew it all already, an inner voice told him, so why worry? But what? He wanted to ask, but even that question now seemed superfluous.
And in this blissful state of unknowing he felt even closer to Meili than when she’d last been in his arms and when he’d last entered her in that other life. She was now inside him, but not in body or spirit, and it gradually dawned on Feng that the whole exercise had been about Meili. Dead or alive, she, not Feier, was a part of him, and this fateful journey was no more than an attempt to make amends with his inner Meili. He must never allow her to die.
***
Feier still saw her mother’s face as clearly as on that day they’d been playing hide-and-seek only hours before both were stricken by the flux. She recalled the clawing fear she felt when unable to find her mother, followed by sheer ecstasy on hearing that oh-so-familiar laughter from behind the broad banyan in the courtyard - then came the joy of running round the huge trunk, finding the woman and being hugged. As for baba, she loved and respected him but in a way that had always been different. There could never have been such happiness on rediscovering him behind a banyan tree. In fact, when sharing time with Angwan she’d felt almost pleased he wasn’t around for there was no pressure on her to justify the flushes that pinked her cheeks in the Miao man’s presence.
Angwan had awakened a new Feier. As a child accompanying her baba to the Miao village, she’d often been aware of the boy’s eyes seeking her out, staring, but dismissed this as idle curiosity. Being Han, and because of this different, she would try to think of herself as a strangely exotic bird and therefore worth looking at. When she and Xiaopeng had grown older and when they began to talk about boys, as if these suddenly mattered, those sneaked glances from the Miao priest’s son would excite Feier in ways she was unable to comprehend. His gaze always made her feel wonderfully warm inside and no longer just a strange-looking bird. Sometimes she feared this warmth would not only cause her to blush but set her aglow, and still she didn’t understand; not until Angwan the man had confessed his feelings did her own desire for him open like a ripe flower bud. But why had Xiaopeng hidden the truth from her: that she was intended for the young priest? The child’s deception helped disperse Feier’s guilt; likewise, the Miao girl’s father’s refusal to discuss the young man’s disappearance, for she’d done nothing wrong.