A Single Petal

by Oliver EADE

  “I... I had to be certain the girl had no good reason to kill the merchant.”

  “Stand up!” ordered Chen. “I’m fed up watching the fleas on your head practice their martial arts. You may - indeed you shall - execute the girl. Do not believe a word the teacher says. He’ll only cover up for her. As for the new magistrate, just know this: the girl’s father and the old magistrate were as thick as thieves. Why do you think he got off so lightly when he failed to turn up for the civil service examination? And that stupid notion of teaching girls... for what purpose? And only possible because of that magistrate.”

  This was a problem Jinjin would need to rectify. The girl’s education might pose a threat to his hold over her as head of their family. She would need ‘un-educating’ or, more acceptably, ‘re-educating’.

  “If you still need proof of the child’s guilt just ask the sun wu kong at the monastery beyond Three Monkey Mountain. The one near the lotus lake where his body was found. He knows everything. Teacher Feng thought the murder would frighten us - a White Tiger merchant killed by a girl child. Symbolic! But he’s the one who must suffer, when he sees the head of the girl he dotes on stuck on a pole outside that pathetic little village schoolhouse. You will do it. You must!”

  Chen Jiabiao laughed at a mental image of the disembodied head of the most beautiful girl in China grinning down at her father one morning from its lofty resting place as if this was the funniest thing he’d ever thought up.

  “But first we go to Chang’an when the emperor-to-be arrives,” he said when his mirth finally subsided. “I have something to attend to there before the big day and you, little cur, will watch my back. Just as my cousin told you. Fail him, and your head ends up on a pole, like the girl’s.”

  Jinjin observed how the nobleman’s delicate fingers curled around the hilt of his sword like the tendrils of an exotic orchid. Such fingers could know nothing of swordmanship. They were fingers of decoration, not purpose.

  “I’ve a better idea,” the boy boldly suggested. “You wish the teacher to

  suffer. That sword of yours, is it sharp?”

  Chen Jiabiao directed his reply at the trembling Kong:

  “He wants me to slice off his head to prove my weapon’s truly sharp,

  right?”

  Kong gaped his bewilderment.

  “You misunderstand, excellency. I wish that sword of yours to become famous,” insisted Jinjin. “And you with it. See... “ He paused to study those brush-stroke eyes. His words had drawn a veil of uncertainty across the man’s face enough to alter those eyes, uncertainty spawned by greed and pride, about which Jinjin was an expert. Once he’d observed a hardened official at Wong’s make a dangerous mistake when tempted by fame. Jinjin-turned-spider was weaving a silken web of words; a web from which the mandarin-to-be, joyfully unaware of what was happening, would not be able to disengage himself. “I’ve been thinking it over and really wanted to check first with you. It could go like this...” the boy suggested:

  The general and his army will await the arrival of the emperor-to-be with his extra troops. The battle will be in their favour since they’ll be able to descend on the city, at dawn, from the mountains with the opposition largely neutralised as a result of Chen Jiabiao’s contacts within (a simple deduction of the reason for a prior visit by Chen), and once the emperor-to-be is no longer ‘to-be’, but ‘is’, the teacher can get his prize. He and his daughter will be summoned to the new court (Jinjin proposed to arrange this himself: ‘the teacher trusts me ... which is why he promised me his daughter’s hand’). Then, in a public square in the centre of Chang’an (‘Yes, I know the very place’, agreed Chen) filled with all the important people of the new China (‘and I know who they’ll be’), thinking he was to be rewarded for his educational services to rural China, the teacher would instead be ordered to behead the girl using Chen’s sword. Afterwards, having listened to the crowd jeering and mocking the daughter’s head grimacing from atop the bamboo pole with which she’d killed the merchant, Feng would be forced to submit to his own execution with the same sword at the hands of Mandarin Chen. All sensitivities would be addressed with the boy’s plan.

  “The teacher and his daughter will be punished and the new emperor will have the satisfaction of seeing an end to Feng’s ridiculous ways. They threaten to destroy the fabric of China. And male superiority! But most important of all, your excellency, you will receive public recognition for bringing the murderers to justice. Chief minister soon, perhaps?”

  The boy waited, his gaze fixed upon those flower-tendril fingers which played absent-mindedly with the sword hilt.

  “Stay here, in my tent,” commanded the nobleman. “Take food only from me or one of my guards. Tell no-one else your plan. No other White Tigers. Understand? There are many we can’t trust. Are there others, apart from my cousin and me and our guards, who know you’re here?”

  “None.”

  “My seal is needed in Chang’an. Certain documents, certain people. You will be rewarded, if things go according to plan.” He glanced again at Kong then chuckled. “Mind you, you already have him!”

  Chen and his guard gone, Jinjin peered through a gap in the tent flap to reassure himself there were no listening ears outside before returning to his bed. He again stretched himself out and grinned at Kong.

  “Am I not brilliant, servant? Tell me the truth!”

  Kong said nothing. Something was disturbing him, but Jinjin had no interest in what this might be. A yawning gulf separated them and he’d already decided to ditch the urchin boy at the earliest opportunity.

  “I have the general wondering about his own cousin and Nobleman Chen now eating from my hand. Truly a reason to wed the most beautiful girl in China without the need for consent from the father.”

  Kong sat and stared at his hands, not taking in anything the other boy was telling him.

  “How could anyone believe a girl child could kill a big, fat merchant? What a fool to think I might be fooled! Besides, the court will be bewitched by her beauty. That flower-fingered nobleman has no eyes for a woman, that’s pretty clear. Seen men like him at Wong’s. I’ll talk to the emperor. Make him see sense. Oh, and another thing, Kong. Jinjin alone will determine the future of China. Think of it! An urchin turned out by his own miserable father. Listen... “ Jinjin was so used to Kong faking deaf and dumb by now he doubted the boy could actually hear him. Like carved wood, he said and did nothing. “Before I heard those lies about the girl’s hand in that murder I still wasn’t sure which emperor to back, despite what Ma said. Now the fate of the empress’s nephew is well and truly sealed. The empress too! No-one defiles the name of my chosen bride. And nothing gets in the way of Jinjin, the boy of gold!”

  Kong, who hadn’t seemed to be listening, turned his face to Jinjin, and for the first time his eyes showed terror beyond fear. A terror beyond words and which even Jinjin failed to understand.

  ***

  When Feng opened his eyes there was only blackness. He remembered Xiuxia bringing rice wine, then more and more of the heady stuff... but he had no idea how he and the painter got home. The sun had long since set, so he must have slept the whole afternoon and much of the evening. His neck felt as if clamped in the jaws of a beast, his belly smarting from the White Tiger’s claw marks. He called out to Master Tsu but the darkness yielded no response. As he eased himself up from his makeshift bed a sheet of parchment fell to the floor. He reached out for it, staggered to his feet and out in the street where there was sufficient illumination to read the beautiful flowing characters:

  Ni chile ma, friend? I believe not. Xiuxia has more than duck to give you. We meet there after you arise from drunken slumber.

  Wary of another attempt on his life, Feng retrieved the bamboo pole and retraced his steps through the dim streets of Chang’an to the restaurant. Cheering yellow light flowed from the o
pen doorway, picking out colours in the clothes of a group of men standing outside, talking. Inside, it was less crowded than before. Not seeing the painter, he sat by himself at a table in a far corner and rested his head on folded arms. Moments later he felt a gentle pressure on his back, then something lightly brushed his head.

  “There’s still blood here. Where those brigands struck you?” He recognised Xiuxia’s Chang’an accent. “I told Master Tsu he should never have let you out his sight. The thieves in the city are far worse than country ones. They don’t do half-measure. Kill without fail.”

  All the time she stroked his wounds. It had been so long since he’d last felt the touch of a woman he’d almost forgotten the joy of it. But guilt overrode the pleasure. He’d sworn celibacy after Meili’s death. It would be dishonourable to her spirit to offer his manhood to another woman when he’d failed so miserably in his attempts to keep her alive. Even if his ancestors were to forgive him, he could never be so lenient. despite Heaven knowing how fickle the ways of women, with the exception of Meili and Feier, are. Another woman might use her sex to blind him and distort his reason, sending Feier along a path of ruin and destitution.

  Self-enforced celibacy had seemed without question when he first saw that ochre-red mound of earth in the small field at the edge of his father’s village in the adjacent prefecture. His ancestors would watch over Meili and he promised them they would never need to spy on her surviving husband. From then on it would be just Feier and himself, and that’s how it had been for eight years - until he entered the little restaurant in the artisans’ quarter of Chang’an.

  Meili’s parents had been killed in a flood that had laid waste huge swathes of land on either side of the Chang Jiang [20]. The girl, a mere six years of age, was found floating on an upturned table, shivering and terrified beyond tears. She had been taken in by a wealthy merchant who was without children, but whose wife feared the child’s beauty. One day when the merchant was away, the yin and yang halves of their decorated circular table kept apart until his return, the woman took the child with whom she’d been entrusted to the local town to sell into servitude. Meili’s ancestors must have intervened, for by some extraordinary coincidence Feng’s father, a local town official, had also gone to market in the place of his sick wife to buy vegetables. Something about the girl’s eyes entranced him. So taken was he that he kept walking up and down past the woman and child. Unable to hold back any longer, he approached the merchant’s wife and later returned home with the child, but no vegetables.

  The scolding he received from his sick wife must have been heard all over the village. Neverthless, the child remained with the official and his family. They grew to love her as their own, even the wife whose health quickly returned. A good omen, they believed.

  Meili was lively and good-natured as well as beautiful, and the only girl child amongst a generation of five sons of whom Feng was the eldest. Together, Feng and his adopted sister journeyed from childhood to maturity, their relationship changing from one of playful friendship to a love rarely seen amongst the arranged marriages of China. When the girl reached the age of fifteen, no-one questioned the marriage arrangements.

  The young couple moved into a modest house built by Feng’s father, the house in which Feier was born, but when Feng’s ability as a scholar became evident all agreed they should move closer to Chang’an, near the town of Houzicheng. The magistrate there had been one of the father’s co-students. He was a man of culture and influence who, it was thought, might help pave the young academic’s path to the imperial palace, either as a court teacher or an official of standing; but for reasons no deity or man of religion had been able to explain, the flux had destroyed that path.

  “Wait here! Xiuxia will return with magical herbs that will heal all your wounds. Only then will she allow you to eat. Duck today, by the way. So popular yesterday Chef Wei went to market to buy more.”

  “Where’s Master Tsu?” asked Feng tetchily, almost annoyed with her that a certain part of his body was again responding to her tender touch.

  “Didn’t he tell you?”

  “Left a note. Said he’d meet me here.”

  “He saw them on his way over.”

  “Who?”

  “Those guards. The other sort. One with a scar on his right cheek. Oh, why do men have to make things so complicated, you with your fancy words and poems and the master with his paintings? Why, some say each work has a thousand meanings. Far too complicated! Keep things simple, I tell him. But does he listen? He... “

  “What other guards are you talking about?”

  “The ones who aren’t what they seem to be. Anyway, Tsu said to play Mama till he gets word to you and under no circumstances should you let on that you’re the village teacher from near Houzicheng who... oh!” she clapped a hand to her mouth. “Just said it! Lucky the place is empty. Anyway, as I was saying, I’ll tend to your injuries.” She stroked the back of his head. “You still haven’t told me what really happened.”

  “Robbers. That’s all.”

  “No, before that.”

  “Before? Like you said. We men make things difficult for ourselves.”

  She left. He wanted to trust her, and if they were truly both agents of the emperor trust should be their common ground; but he’d already made too many mistakes. Back in Houzicheng, he thought that accursed urchin boy was to be trusted and how wrong he had been. Feng still wondered why the boy had played games with him before betraying him to the White Tigers. What could he have gained from such actions? Sexual attraction aside, Xiuxia seemed rather like the urchin with her unstoppable confidence and prying questions and this made the teacher wary.

  Oh, the sexual thing! Feng crossed his legs as his mind removed the red robe from her bosom. He feared her imminent return with herbal concoctions, those warm soft hands and the smell of her. Should the swell of desire take over he had no idea where it might lead. By way of distraction, he gazed at each of Master Tsu’s scroll paintings hanging on the walls, at the cascading characters of inspirational poetry describing each idyllic scene.

  The paintings were mostly of the fabled mountains of the south where rock, trees, cloud and water blended into a whole of perfect balance. Like the calligraphy, streams flowed down from lofty cliffs, the movement held still in a moment of time like a restless soul trapped in the hand of destiny. In one picture, a tiny figure fished from a tiny boat. That he was only fishing in parchment, not water, seemed of no importance. In another, a solitary peasant with a wide-brimmed hat and a laden bamboo pole balanced across his shoulders, followed a filigree path beside a river, his worries lost somewhere in the whole. Looking from one scroll to the next, Feng realised how like these painted people he must appear. If only his guilt over Meili’s death and his concern for little Feier could be brush-stroked into a picture! If only Master Tsu could transform him into one of those figures!

  A voice disturbed his reverie. Feng turned. Two men stood in the doorway. One, tall and elegantly dressed, wore the high black hat of a court official and the other was built like a water buffalo. This fellow had on baggy trousers and sported a droopy moustache. He scanned the restau-rant with darting flint-sharp eyes. The official beckoned to Feng. Feng turned, still hoping Xiuxia might reappear to play Mama with him in some dark corner.

  “Quick! Before she returns,” called the official, leaving with his companion.

  Grabbing the bamboo pole, Feng pushed back his seat and hurried to the entrance. Already the men were a block away, walking fast, and Feng ran to catch up. Periodically, they would dive into an open doorway as if hiding from someone, and the teacher did likewise. Then, although dark, he saw the men were following two imperial guards in purple and yellow uniforms. They continued this stop-go journey through the unlit streets of Chang’an, with Feng close on their heels, until they reached a grand courtyard house beyond the artisans’ district. The
guards, followed by the water buffalo and the court official, disappeared into the courtyard. Feng approached the house with unease, fearing this is where he might make his final mistake and render his daughter fatherless, but he was unprepared for what awaited him in the courtyard.

  19 The holiest of China’s five holy mountains, in the province of Shandong.

  20 Yangtze River

  Hands of Death

  Perhaps it would have turned out differently if they hadn’t made love for a third time, but nothing could now part them. Their passion had been so energised it seemed the little farmhouse might take off into the sky, carrying them to a place where even the Jade Emperor would look on in astonishment at the strength of their qi force. When both were finally spent, Feier lay folded in Angwan’s arms, completely happy for the first time since her mother left her behind. They drifted off to sleep, exhausted, and Angwan’s plan was never allowed to take shape. Only after the cock had crowed four times did Angwan stir. A shaft of early morning light cut through the cool air. On one side of the shimmering strip lay a young Miao priest and a beautiful, de-flowered Han girl, still asleep, her breasts bared, and on the other side, the stark stone oven, the rickety table, the smell of pigs and the farmer seated like a temple demon awaiting the right moment to split the young lovers asunder with his sharpened Dao[21]. After the few moments it took for the priest to emerge from his torpor, reality hit him with arrow precision. He sat bolt upright. The farmer continued to stare in angered disbelief as Angwan quickly covered the girl’s naked torso with a colourful rug tossed aside by passion. Yueloong sprang forwards, snatching away the rug.

  “How dare you defile the cloth woven by the hands of my daughter!”

  Feier opened her eyes and screamed. She flailed around until one hand made contact with her night robe, then pulled this up over her upper body to her chin. Angwan, scrambled from the bed to stand, without a stitch on, between Farmer Li and his girl.