by Oliver EADE
Jinjin smelled the wine before he reached the first line of tents. Empty flagons, interspersed with half-gnawed goats’ bones, littered the outskirts of the camp. This meant one thing to the boy: the emperor-to-be had arrived, swelling the ranks of Ma’s army, and there’d been a celebration to mark the occasion. All save Ma would be drunk.
He slunk from tent to tent without encountering a single conscious lookout. Those entrusted with the safety of their sleeping comrades were slumped sideways over their impotent weapons. Creeping up to within a hand’s distance of the face of the guard outside the entrance to the general’s tent caused no more than a flicker of an eyelid as the man shifted his position. The boy’s memory being infallible, he knew exactly where to sneak in and by choosing that spot rather than the far end where General Ma would be lying asleep, he once again altered the course of Chinese history.
It was the stench of wine that did it. His father had always inflicted the worst beatings when filled with wine. He’d seen men lose chess games, forfeit wives, homes - all possessions - whilst gambling under the influence of spirit. Drunkenness could lay waste China as it had destroyed his family.
He abandoned his plan, the one that came to him when he hesitated before joining General Gao on the mountain pass. Jinjin entered the tent by lifting up the felt halfway along the length of one side, transferring himself from a wine-filled darkness that reminded him of his father to one laden with the perfume of girls. Knowing she, the one who refused to leave his mind, would possess a fragrance far, far better, he stopped and listened. Sure enough one girl was crying softly, as Ma said she did every night. Jinjin prayed she understood enough Mandarin not to scream out in alarm and, crawling with cat-like stealth between the langurous bodies of delicious young females and the sloping wall of the tent, he approached the sobs. When level with the girl, he imagined the teacher’s daughter also crying at some point in the future because he was away on an important errand for the emperor. He whispered:
“Teacher Feng sent me. To return you to your father. Stay quiet. Not a word and do everything I tell you.”
The sobbing stopped. There was movement in the darkness. Then a face appeared just two hand breadths from his. He could see now why she’d been placed in the general’s tent with the prettiest girls. Her features were exquisite and the urge to climb into her bed was overwhelming, but the girl in his head was even prettier and his wish to stay alive remained strong. Taking her by the arm, he helped the child down into the gap between the tent and the bed, lifted the canvas edge and, using the same route, skirted around the tents towards the mountainside. Progress was slow. The poor girl was barefoot so, crouching behind a boulder, the boy removed his shoes and set to work strapping them on Xiaopeng’s feet. Only rarely did Jinjin wear shoes, his most valuable possession, at Wong’s, and he marvelled at how small the girl’s feet were. As she gracefully balanced each foot on his lap, not one word was spoken. He tied the shoes as tightly as he dared without causing her to cry out. Absurdly large on her young legs, they resembled the large feet of a little wading bird. Her eyes were those of a frightened rabbit, but there was trust in them and this was the first time any girl had looked at him in such a way, with trust. He wondered whether those eyes knew things yet unrevealed, and such musing helped to tame his young man’s carnal thoughts. For him the first time would have to be with a girl who was as pure as the female in his head.
His hardened soles, as tough as clothes beaters, felt nothing as they scrambled on up the steep slope. Once again, slinking from rock to rock, always invisible to the imperial lookout up on the pass, they reached the cart in which the teacher still slept amongst soldiers’ food rations. Without taking her sad, wide eyes off him, Xiaopeng got lifted onto the cart and the cover pulled aside. Jinjin jumped up after her and shook Feng awake. The man raised himself onto an elbow, rubbed his eyes and peered at the boy’s grinning face.
“What?” he asked irritably.
Jinjin reached back, took the girl’s sleeve and pulled her into the teacher’s field of vision. Grinning triumphantly, the boy watched Feng’s face, expecting it to glow with admiration for what he’d achieved and to promise unimaginable wealth; then he, Jinjin, would magnanimously offer to relieve the teacher of that burden of worry about his daughter and the marriage maker.
“Little Xiaopeng? Is it really you?”
“Yes, teacher,” said the Miao girl.
“Shhh!” Jinjin cupped his hand over her mouth. “Not a word ‘til after the attack. ‘ Til I’ve explained you to General Gao. Otherwise soldiers out there will turn you into a fish!” The girl frowned her puzzlement. “The teacher will explain another time - if you don’t already know. Over there! In the corner! Behind me and the teacher! It’s the safest place.”
As the girl clambered over boxes and sacks of food to the back of the cart, her tempting curves and young breasts barely concealed by a thin sleeping garment, Jinjin worked out in his mind, before falling asleep, how to protect the Miao girl from fifty thousand female-deprived men.
***
It was still dark when Jinjin awoke with a start to a gentle knocking on the side of the cart. Feng and the girl were already up, in whispered conversation.
“What are you talking about?” he asked suspiciously.
“My daughter,” replied the teacher. “Xiaopeng wants to know how she’s looking after her father. She worries the girl has spent too much time in the schoolroom and not enough over the cooking pan and vegetables. I told her she’s right.”
Without replying, Jinjin jumped from the cart.
“Keep her hidden. Wait ‘ til I return.”
Normally, Feng would not have suffered such a string of commands from an upstart little older than Feier, but these were not normal times, and Jinjin was no ordinary young man. He listened to the crunch of Jinjin’s thick-soled unshod feet on the gravel outside as the boy walked off to seek out the general. He felt around in the dark for food to give the girl, found a mantou and offered this to her but she shook her head. Something informed him all was not well, that perhaps she had been taken, but he didn’t know how to ask. The only job he’d known was to teach young people, boys and girls, and he always thought he understood children so perfectly; but he realised there was gaping gap between him and the girl. There was something else, too, perhaps more of a problem than their age difference. If this had been Feier squatting timidly before him, and recently prisoner to an army of tens of thousands of sex-starved fighting men, would he really want to know whether or how she’d been deflowered? This being the case, surely he had no right to learn the fate of the farmer’s daughter. Nevertheless, if she’d been taken he would have failed Yueloong.
The footsteps returned, augmented by the leather shoe tread of a man heavier than Jinjin. The curtain was pulled apart. Xiaopeng kept her eyes lowered in the face of the man’s gaze. Feng watched the general’s changing expressions, from disbelief, to lust, to anger until, for the first time, a smile pulled at the corners of the man’s thin mouth. He turned to Jinjin.
“So, you’re telling me the man who would wish to become emperor is now one short of a thousand petals? I like it! I really do! And because of this girl, he won’t have the qi force to save his army from obliteration?”
“The girl is Buddhist,” added Feng, as if this might protect her from being ravished by Gao’s troops.
Jinjin continued:
“Your excellency, because of Xiaopeng’s rescue the nephew’s karma is being rewritten. She’s the one who has changed everything. Altered the destiny of the Middle Kingdom! If she’s destroyed, Ma will get stronger. Balance of force. Don’t you see?”
“All I see is a girl as pretty as any painting in the Imperial Palace.”
“Down there are another nine hundred and ninety-nine. Would you risk the wrath of the emperor’s ancestors by putting the whole of China at risk for a few moments of
pleasure?”
General Gao laughed.
“Few moments? When did you last have a girl, little urchin? But you’re right. Besides, we must attack before sunrise. Stay here with the girl, Teacher Feng. Jinjin, you come with me. Help me track down the traitor Ma.”
***
When Jinjin and the general had disappeared over the pass, together with fifty thousand troops, horses and catapults, when the noise of an army on the move had dwindled to silence, for the mountain blocked the clamour of battle on the plain beyond, then the teacher asked. And he watched as the girl who was little more than a child fought the terror blanking her mind; he thought of his child alone at night in the Miao farmhouse and imagined her being defenceless against a mob of village men even though his friend was honourable. As with his daughter, he had to know this girl with him in the army cart was untouched.
“Did those soldiers do anything to you?”
Xiaopeng, without looking up, shook her head.
Whatever the outcome of the soundless battle now waging on that plain beyond the pass, Feng now swore he would protect the honour of the farmer’s daughter with his life. If that was lost, his spirit would return to drive away any would-be ravishers. She would be returned pure to her father as Feier would be returned to him, untouched.
Heaven and Hell
Jinjin had never imagined a battle could have been won so easily. When the catapults first launched their boulders and globes of fire from the slopes, thousands upon thousands of troops already encircled the entire camp, having stripped away the enemy’s weaponries. Archers released locust swarms of arrows whilst terrified warriors emerged from tents, staggering blindly in the dark. Waves of soldiers loyal to the emperor swept in from the periphery, slicing paths through the enemy with mechanical efficiency. Meanwhile, Jinjin directed General Gao to the long tent then followed in the man’s wake as the general slashed his way across the camp.
The tent still stood and was one of several that screamed with shrill, young female voices. The general, with bloodied sword in hand, approached.
“The girls, General Gao! Please don’t harm them!”
“First rule of war, Jinjin. Women are not for killing. Think of them as a bonus for a job well done.”
Sitting in his night garment on the ground at the back of the tent, holding an empty flagon of wine, General Ma looked up as Gao approached.
“Only one prisoner, Ma! We don’t have enough food to feed the rest. But I see at last you’ve discovered the pleasure of wine, ay?”
Ma made no attempt to resist when the other general kicked the bottle from his hand and dragged him to his feet. Using a tie that had kept Ma’s hair in a neat bun at the top, General Gao bound his rival’s wrists behind his back whilst the man’s tangled hair fell untidily across his broad, bearded face. Jinjin emerged from behind the safety of Gao’s bulk and approached the prisoner.
“Blame our fathers if you wish,” he said to Ma. “You see, the stink of the wine reminded me of my father and all those beatings.”
“Pah! I should have known when the crying stopped. This was all about that stupid girl, wasn’t it?”
“And respect for the yin,” added Jinjin. “General Gao was lenient to the girl. He showed respect. Like Teacher Feng. She returns to her baba.”
“Go, Jinjin,” said General Gao. “This slaughter isn’t for young boys. Go back to the teacher. Take the cart and the girl before my weary soldiers return with their spoils. That virgin you hide won’t remain so for long if she’s still there when they do. Take the trail off the mountain towards the rising sun then join the road back to your province. I promise you, the emperor will hear of your courage. Go!”
Jinjin stood for a few moments staring at General Ma’s feet.
“He’ll not need those, will he? In his next life? They look about the right size.”
“Take them! Pigs don’t wear shoes!”
Jinjin hurriedly relieved Ma of his shoes before scrambling back up the side of the mountain to rejoin the teacher and the Miao girl. The sun had already risen when they turned the cart around and urged its two docile horses on towards a downward trail to the east. They had enough provisions to last a thousand men several days, but General Gao must have reckoned there’d be more than enough to feed his troops in the nephew’s camp. Whether the nephew of the empress had been slaughtered that night, or would end up losing his head in a public square in Chang’an alongside General Ma, Jinjin never found out. From that moment on it was as if he’d never existed, and the titles of’empress’ and the ‘emperor’s first wife’ were passed on to another woman.
The Miao girl smelt as delicious now as when he first saw her in that
tent.
“Does she speak fluent mandarin?” Jinjin asked Feng.
“Ask her! She should do. She and my daughter have been close friends for eight years and my girl speaks barely a word of her language. Thanks to our emperor, some day all our communities in China will be able to talk with one another.”
“Thanks to you, Teacher Feng! Xiaopeng, tell me about your young friend the teacher speaks of. His daughter. What’s she like? Is she obedient?”
Feng scowled. To scold the boy who’d rescued the farmer’s daughter and was allowing him to return home alive seemed wrong, but the ancestors might forgive a scowl.
“Why do you ask?” she questioned.
“Gao’s a man of honour. He’ll see me rewarded by the emperor. What better reward than to see Teacher Feng’s daughter married off to someone in power? Xiaopeng, tell me. What’s she like? Pretty?”
Xiaopeng nodded.
“No temper?”
The Miao girl shook her head.
“I hear you’re also Buddhist. Like the teacher. Does the girl say her prayers? Pay her dues to the monks?” “Ask her father.” “Feng?”
“What is it to you? Or to anyone at court?”
“Do you want my help? Haven’t I made it possible for you to forget the marriage maker?”
Feng recalled his daughter’s fear of death, the monastery - even the Buddha. Perhaps he’d been too caught up trying to erase the lingering memory of Meili, covering up the past whilst failing to explain things beyond his comprehension to little Feier.
“I’m sure I told you. About the monasteries,” Feng replied.
“Oh yes! The monasteries and their sun wu kongs.”
Jinjin had yet to solve the business of the merchant’s death and the monasteries. He knew Chen had been lying and that the murder involved the monastery near Feng’s village. Solve that and the teacher could not refuse him!
***
Angwan spent only one day and one night in the Miao village the other side of Houzicheng to where he’d been banished. No-one there liked Old Xiang, and when the story had been retold in his words not a single man in the village saw any objection to his having had his pleasure with the teacher’s daughter. They were envious of course, for those deprived of bed companions longed for women, but the disappearances only made Angwan’s action more acceptable. Besides, with Farmer Li a Buddhist and Angwan having spent time in the monastery, each had a foot in the Han world. Better Angwan marry a Han than compete for the few remaining Miao girls. Old Xiang and his brother should be pleased, they decided amongst themselves. But Angwan had said nothing about the arranged betrothal to Xiaopeng.
The following day, he left for the monastery near the lotus lake. The elders had suggested a cooling-off period before returning to his village. Time, they said, was the best healer of anger, and early reappearance would merely worsen the Han girl’s punishment.
It was a hot day, and on the trail from the lotus lake he stopped at the oil press halfway up the hill, since he’d run out of water. He knew the operator, for during his brief period as a novice monk he used to visit him.
The press was
one of several in the area, all owned by the monastery. No peasant could afford such expensive equipment, but they paid rent to the monks which is how Angwan became acquainted with Chou, a thin-faced man with prominent teeth and a limp, who worked from day-break “ til sundown producing sesame and other oils from seed, whatever the weather. The young Miao priest had been aware of a rift between Chou and the sun wu kong, and that it was to do with taxes levied on the oil. Somehow, the fat trader had been involved. The operator never told the full story and Angwan now wanted to uncover the truth, but Chou would always dry up like an abandoned sesame press, saying he was too busy and that a young man would never understand anyway.
“Ni hao[23] , Angwan! Back for more of that gibberish nonsense up there on the top of the hill?” asked Chou.
“If only it was that easy!” responded Angwan. “I may stay a while, though. ‘ Til things have blown over. What news from the villages, friend
Chou?”
“Nothing for your ears, Angwan.”
“Did the children go past this morning? With Teacher Feng’s daughter?”
“Now there’s a thing! Monks tell me she got herself into some sort of trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“Big! But as I said, not for your ears. And from what I heard the teacher’s unlikely to come back. What a fool! Chasing your missing girls and hunting down the merchant’s killer. Pah! There’s many glad to see that man dead. Why go asking questions?”