A Single Petal

by Oliver EADE

  “It’s not what it appears to be,” he protested. “She had nothing to do with this. It was my wish... my idea. I told you we should marry. This is the only way, Li Yueloong. I can marry us myself. I’m a priest. It’s how it should be. Your brother has it wrong.”

  “My brother is proved right. The child is a sorceress. The only thing you can now do is to denounce her, when her enchantment has worn off. Take him away!” he shouted.

  Half a dozen village men, who’d been waiting outside for this moment, crowded into the small room and began to drag the struggling priest from the building.

  “Wait. Don’t touch her! She’s with child. My child. Touch her and you incite the wrath of your ancestors!”

  “We shall see. She may no longer be with child when she hears what the elders have to say. Cover her parts that have bewitched our priest and stolen my child’s future happiness. Take her to the cage!”

  “No... Yueloong - you can’t. Not the cage. She’s but a child. Her hair’s not yet pinned up,” cried Angwan, trying in vain to kick and punch his captors.

  “No longer a child, Angwan. You have just seen to that. As for being with child, time will inform us in due course. If she survives till her next monthly loss.”

  Angwan’s shouts and cries dwindled to silence whilst the girl, shaking with fear, slipped into her robe and allowed one of the men to entrap her wrists in a narrow wooden frame with two small holes. A leather collar attached to a chain was fitted around her neck and, as if nothing more than a wild animal, she was led away from the farmhouse. Despite the early hour, all villagers, children as well, were gathered in Farmer Li’s yard. They followed in silence, like curious cattle, as the Han girl was taken through the village to an open space at the far end of which stood a bamboo cage no larger than an oven. Two men pushed the cage to the centre, purposefully placing it over a mound of donkey faeces. Both chuckled as a third villager opened the sliding trap door of the cage and pushed the girl inside. She was forced to sit on the donkey shit with her knees pressed against her chin. The door slid shut and was secured with binds at the top and bottom.

  Li Yueloong came up close and crouched beside the cage, looking away from the sobbing child.

  “We will keep you alive until the wise men of the village have decided your fate - and until we know whether or not Angwan tells the truth about a child inside you. It’s no longer of importance that your father keeps his side of our agreement.”

  Before dispersing, every villager showed his or her support for the farmer by spitting at the face of the girl in the cage.

  ***

  Jinjin, the blethering urchin from Wong’s inn, stood staring as if he’d seen a gui. In the shade of a tree lurked a sturdy black-clothed figure with folded arms. For what seemed an interminable period, though in truth only seconds, the teacher and the boy who’d deceived him eyed each other. Perhaps Feng was waiting for his mind to decide what fate to choose for the boy; unprepared, he felt bombarded by every emotion he’d yet experienced and more. Anger predominated, mostly about the poem concerning Feier whom the rascal had never met and never would. Holding the bamboo pole with both hands like a spear, the teacher ran at Jinjin.

  ***

  So much is determined by chance it’s a wonder anyone bothers to influence his or her destiny by trying to make decisions!

  A few days earlier, the urchin from Houzicheng, enraged by Chen’s ridiculous story about the teacher’s daughter, vowed to kill the man in the most certain but quietest and safest (for him) way possible: at the hands of General Ma. Already he was amassing evidence of the treachery of the general’s cousin against the cause of the empress’s nephew.

  The girl in his head a murderer? Sheer nonsense! Was Feng not risking his life? Would Feng really try to track down his merchant friend’s killer if it was he who had arranged for the girl to kill Chang? Besides, he’d known nothing about the White Tiger League and more than anything else Jinjin prided himself in his ability to distinguish liars from those who spoke the truth. No, Chen was lying! Also, he was no more in with the White Tigers than he and Kong were. A few days, he reckoned, was all that would be required to expose his weaknesses and do the necessary.

  But it took even less time and in a way that involved no effort on his part.

  Chen liked alcohol, not women. What he used instead of women came to the fore whenever inebriated. His vitriol against the famed beauty of the teacher’s daughter had no obvious foundation in fact other than his desire to destroy the power of yin that guides most hot-blooded men to better things. Every evening, the noblemen and his immediate guards would disappear, after eating in their tent, to drink themselves silly. Jinjin and Kong usually sat crouched in a corner until the men had departed. Liberated, they would mess around, laugh, tell jokes and have mock battles, for they knew they’d be safe until the early hours of the following day when Chen would re-enter the tent, belch, fart and stagger over to his curtained-off sleeping quarter before shaking the tent with snores. Jinjin always attributed the strange, glazed look on the nobleman’s face to drunkenness. On the sixth night the true reason for this became clear. The boy had never seriously wondered what men without women actually did. That evening he found out.

  An unsteady Chen returned, belched then farted, but instead of heading off for bed he stopped in front of the boys. His reddened eye slits fixed on Kong.

  “Far more beautiful than any Hangzhou woman!” he announced grinning stupidly, his speech slurred. Jinjin noticed the hilt of the man’s sword was partly covered by his tunic which hung in untidy folds from his waist. He was without a hat and long straggles of hair that had escaped the tight knot at the back of his head hung drunkenly to below his sloping shoulders. The stench of flatus merged with that of stale rice wine already filling the tent.

  “Come with me, beautiful boy!”

  As he leaned over Kong, saliva dribbled from the corner of his mouth. Like a frightened crab pressed against a rock, Kong tried to distance himself from the inebriated nobleman by scrambling backwards into a corner. Chen drew his sword and stepped forward.

  “Beautiful boy, I promise only pleasure behind that curtain. Pleasure or death? Which is it to be?”

  For a few moments it seemed the urchin would choose death, for he remained cowering on the ground before Chen. The sword glinted in the low light of the lamp and perhaps it was this that helped Kong to decide. He rose to his feet, standing over a head shorter than the nobleman. Chen gripped the boy’s arm with his free hand, flicked aside the curtain with the point of his sword and dragged him backwards into his chamber. Jinjin caught the merest glimpse of a bed, clothes in neat piles and two bamboo baskets, before the curtain was pulled across, shutting out his fear of the unknown.

  Was this enough to eliminate Chen? Jinjin wondered, both horrified and relieved he now knew why the nobleman had told lies about the teacher’s beautiful daughter. By destroying the girl, possibly the prettiest in the whole of China, the man was defiling her sex. Surely this would be at variance with the ways of the empress’s nephew, the man who would have a thousand girls to give him the strength to overthrow the current emperor. If he were caught attempting to enter a boy, would his cousin not behead him on the spot whichever emperor Chen would have on the throne?

  Jinjin could not be certain. He hesitated as the sounds from behind the curtain informed his ears that most deviant things were happening there.

  “Go away!” his dumb servant shouted, blowing their cover. Chen, perhaps too drunk, perhaps too desperate to expose an unwilling resting place for his jade stem to wonder how a dumb boy could suddenly speak, merely grunted. Jinjin had heard such grunts emerge from the upstairs rooms at Wong’s inn whenever a whore had successfully persuaded a wine-filled merchant to part with a handful of coppers.

  There was little time left. When the grunting was over, Chen would surely kill Kong then him. J
injin crept towards the tent flap, hoping the guards would be as intoxicated as the man doing weird things to his servant. He’d only gone a few paces when the grunting ceased. An odd gulping sound caused Jinjin to freeze. A dead Kong could be of little use to him and Chen might turn the tables if he were to run and blame him for the other boy’s death. However much Jinjin felt in tune with the general, the man was more likely to believe a nobleman’s fables than an urchin’s truth. Jinjin would lose his head and never gain his prize.

  Without turning to look, the urchin became aware of movement just before the curtain behind him was pulled aside. He prayed it would be quick, for a long drawn out death whilst taunted by a tantalizing vision of the teacher’s daughter would be the worst thing possible, like having his face rubbed in his own failure before his eyes were forced to close for the last time. “Master?”

  The voice was unmistakably Kong’s. Jinjin looked over his shoulder. The other boy stood with his pants around his ankles, his broad hands stretched wide, palms forward.

  “I think I’m going to be sick, master,” he announced, avoiding eye contact with Jinjin and hurriedly retreating back beyond the curtain. Jinjin looked for something that might serve as a weapon. He picked up a bowl lying on the ground beside the tent flap, slowly approached the curtain and eased it open just enough to take in the scene.

  Chen Jiabiao lay on one side, half-slumped across the bed. His tunic was ruffled up and he wore no trousers. From where Jinjin stood, the man’s privates were hidden and the boy wanted to keep it that way. What drew his attention was the position of the man’s head on his shoulders. It was bent back at an impossible angle; but far worse was the blank, sightless face seeming to peer over his shoulder as if the head had been detached and impaled backwards onto that slim neck.

  Kong began to heave.

  “Not here, not now,” whispered Jinjin, but he was too late. Kong, leaning over the man who’d abused him, brought up strings of noodles, green vegetables and lumps of fatty pork onto that unseeing face. Again and again the boy vomited until Chen’s head was covered by the evening’s meal and more.

  “Pull up your stupid pants and run!” commanded Jinjin. “You’ve done enough. His spirit’s defiled for good. If we don’t leave now our gui will soon join him.”

  Kong fumbled uselessly with his pants and Jinjin was obliged to assist before picking up Chen’s discarded sword belt and sword from the floor and quickly stuffing anything of potential value into a bamboo basket. This he gave to Kong, together with a bamboo pole he spotted leaning against the tent frame. Moments later they were outside.

  The darkness was almost complete, just enough light to inform him there was nobody close by. At the entrance, he carved into the ground the characters for Nu Wa, the first goddess, and hoped the general would understand the reason for this: no self-respecting goddess could allow such a mockery of her sex as had been played out by the effeminate Chen. He knew the next time they were to meet he’d have no opportunity to thank Ma for saving his life by showing the servant boy what his hands might achieve. There was something about the stocky warrior general Jinjin admired, and the urchin felt almost sorry he’d have to kill the man, but Ma’s fate had now been decided. Nobleman Chen had made the decision for him.

  After they’d left the camp, ascended the slope and travelled a few li along the track towards the main Houzicheng to Chang’an thoroughfare, they stopped running. No-one would imagine them stupid enough to take the long way round when fleeing for their lives to the capital. If the general thought fit to pursue them it would have been over the mountains, but the chances of Chen being found before dawn were small. By the time the corpse of the man with the broken neck who chose boys over women was discovered, Jinjin and his servant would be far away.

  “You’ll have to teach me how you did that,” said Jinjin as they entered the first village.

  “The general showed you,” replied the other boy. “Weren’t you listening?”

  Jinjin looked at Kong’s large hands then his own.

  “Must be the size of the hands,” he decided. “Now remember! You’re still mute. Use those hands if and when you need to, otherwise play the dutiful servant. Got it?”

  “One thing, master...”

  “Yes?”

  “A girl. When will I get a girl? My need is now all the more urgent!”

  “Patience, servant! Do as I say and you might just survive. Survive, and one day soon you’ll have a girl!”

  As they sought a place of refuge in the unlit village, Kong said nothing more and Jinjin didn’t question him. Rarely was the urchin from Wong’s inn at a loss for questions, but something had happened to Kong, something so weird and so wrong he didn’t want to know any more. For the first time since running away from home his eagerness for knowledge abandoned him.

  The boys slept overnight in a pigsty, scrounged food and drink from the villagers and left early the following morning. Conversation with Kong proved impossible, locked away as he was in a shell of bitterness, but Jinjin sensed anger fiercer than fire waiting to burst open that shell. He knew now what the boy was capable of and decided to avoid all unnecessary verbal communication until such a time when fanning the fire might yield rewards. In silence, they headed back to the Houzicheng to Chang’an road, then on towards the imperial city. Jinjin asked at every farmhouse whether a teacher by the name of Feng had passed through, and each gave the same reply: ‘Yes, but two days earlier.’ He was so desperate to catch up with Feng he made Kong walk on for part of the night, only stopping briefly for rests and sustenance, but always the teacher remained ahead. Before reaching the Xiangjisi Temple outside the southern city gate of Chang’an, two days had been reduced to one. Surely here the monks would know about Feng. Indeed, there was a chance he’d still be there trying to work out whom he should approach with his theory about the missing Miao girls; but without the masterful brain of Jinjin to help him, the man would be lost, his daughter forever out of reach.

  “A teacher by the name of Feng? A name we never hear much in Changa’an, young man. Why the interest?”

  Jinjin didn’t believe the sun wu kong. Nor did he trust the man. From what Feng had told him, it seemed there might be a link between monasteries and the White Tigers. He made sure his tattooed hand was visible at all times and got Kong to pour water from a jug when they were invited to dine with the monks just to be sure the man could also see his servant’s ink-engraved, knife-cut allegiance to the League, but he saw not a flicker of response from the bone-faced old monk. He talked all evening, and tried every gambit learned from the Wong’s inn days to uncover the truth, but the man remained an unrolled scroll. Jinjin even explained how the teacher’s daughter was the loveliest girl in the whole of China, and recited a poem he’d written to honour her beauty (as seen in his head), but still nothing! The following day he and Kong had entered the city.

  Not in his most ambitious dreams had he ever pictured himself walking the streets of Chang’an with a personal servant. The wide avenues and houses were more magnificent than anything he’d heard spoken of at Wong’s, the dress of the mandarins and courtly ladies beyond his wildest imagination. Elegant men and women sped past, borne aloft in bouncing sedan seats carried by sinewy men whose exposed calf muscles tightened like balls of steel with every running step. But only a few hundred bu[22] further on were the slums of the artisans’ quarter and the squalor of the district of whores. Nothing in Houzicheng seemed so close to hell as this quarter of the city. Even early in the morning, painted ladies tried to entice the boys into dark places that reeked of sickly perfumes tinged with urine and sweat. Some sold stale cakes and rotting fruit from stalls in the street, and several times Kong stopped to stare at these ladies and Jinjin had to urge him on. Only one, a woman younger than the others, caught Jinjin’s attention. Her face was almost pretty, but her body was deformed and her eyes showed pain. No pleasure could possibly
come from sleeping with a woman like that.

  “Not here,” whispered Jinjin. Kong’s eyes were changed, filled with inner hurt like the whore’s, but no good would have come from Kong attempting to go with this woman. “These cheap whores are only for men who have lost all hope. Not the servant of one who seeks to impress the emperor and marry the most beautiful girl in China. Come, we’ve work to do! I’ll get you a classy courtesan later.”

  Rounding the next corner, Jinjin spotted a tattered red lantern hanging outside an establishment he took to be an eating place since delicious aromas of food now teased his nostrils.

  “Hungry?” he asked Kong. The other boy merely nodded. “Wait here. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Jinjin left his servant standing alone with their bamboo basket to talk with a woman dressed in red, busily sweeping away debris from the floor around the tables and drum seats out onto the street. She looked up as he approached.

  “No children allowed by themselves,” she announced. “Come back with your baba.”

  Jinjin took an instant dislike to her. She was shapely, and would have served as an introduction to the mysteries of yin for Kong better than any of those whores, but her haughty expression and ridiculous hair, held up by what appeared to be two black chopsticks, irritated him. Besides, he owned a servant and had been entrusted with the confidence of a general.

  “We’re not here for your miserable food, woman. I have my own inn at Houzicheng,” he lied. “I seek audience with the emperor. Just wondered whether you’d seen a... “

  “Away with you! Before I sweep you and your dumb friend into the privy hole at the back! Off! Shoo!”

  Jinjin, disappointed, backed away. It was the first of many such establishments he would visit over the following few days, none of which gave him information about the teacher. Thanks to a market vendor, he received a good price for Nobleman Chen’s sword and some of the man’s finer clothes that he’d packed into the bamboo basket, together with a few small ornaments, so they had enough to rent a cheap room near the whores’ quarter at the south end of the city.