by Oliver EADE
“Has anyone else been asking you about Merchant Chang? Any of the magistrate’s men?”
“That new guy? Who used to be a monk up there on the hill? No. I’ve not seen or spoken with anyone from Houzicheng. Suppose you’re after water, then?”
Angwan nodded. Knowing he’d squeeze little more out of Chou, he helped himself using a ceramic cup on the floor beside a water-filled pot in the corner.
“Surprised the sun wu kong hasn’t decided to tax the water too. Mind you, with Chang dead, the man’s going to want to play safe.” Big trouble? Play safe?
Angwan had no clear idea how he’d get assistance from the monastery. Perhaps the Buddha might take pity on him and mollify the guilt that was driving him insane, although he’d have preferred a small army to secure the girl’s release to a flock of useless, silent monks. But help or no help, there was one monk he had to seek out before Li Yueloong’s next visit to the temple; one monk who might save Feier’s life.
***
It was the women who finally took pity on the girl and demanded the men free her for short periods from that awful bamboo cage. They washed her, fed her and rubbed oils into the red stripes and the bruises where the struts had pressed into her tender, young skin. No-one questioned the need to punish the girl, and the elders still argued and discussed her fate, unable to agree on the severity of the sentence, but the women insisted Feier was no animal and not to be treated as one, even if her religion was likely to shortly return her to Earth as a pig. Also, Yueloong now insisted she be kept alive until at least three moons after her father’s departure.
At first she would scream and struggle before being returned to the cage, but when Old Xiang threatened her with a beating she would go silent and limp, as if her spirit had already abandoned her and, to the disgust of all, Old Xiang continued to urinate over her when she was entrapped in that bamboo nightmare. Only fading memories of the night in Angwan’s arms prevented her heart from giving up. She tried to imagine the pain of the bamboo yielding to the firm touch of his fingers and his thighs, and she held on to life whilst the village elders deliberated over her death.
***
They made good progress along the road to Houzicheng. Whether it was the presence of the girl or because of the boy’s attempt to play ‘little mandarin’, Feng couldn’t make out, but the non-stop banter of the urchin from Wong’s inn had been replaced by long periods of silence for which the teacher was grateful. He was able to think. There’d been little chance to do that ever since leaving the Xiangjisi monastery and he needed this time to plan his daughter’s future happiness.
He’d played a role in protecting the emperor’s throne, albeit small compared with that of the boy who had finally stopped talking. There was the distinct possibility of a reward from the emperor. His choice: a post in the city. He and Feier could open a school together; fame of his new teaching methods might attract attention in the capital, and for sure Feier’s beauty would not go unnoticed. He could see her as a court teacher, sought after by princes and sons of mandarins alike.
Trusting no-one, all three slept overnight in the cart. Jinjin and Feng took it in turns to stay awake and guard the girl. The only available weapon was the sharpened bamboo stake that had travelled with the teacher from the merchant’s final resting place beside the lotus lake to Chang’an and now accompanied him on his return journey. It had become for the man a symbol of his determination, but for Jinjin, still eager to solve the death of the teacher’s friend, it was something different: a puzzle.
Why kill a man with a bamboo pole? Because the murderer had no access to more efficient weaponry? Because he could never be traced since bamboo was used by anyone and everyone for anything and everything? Or because bamboo stems yield in the wind and the merchant had perhaps upset someone - a White Tiger, maybe - through intolerance, and therefore his fate would have to be determined with bamboo? Although Jinjin spoke little on the road to Houzicheng, the voice inside his head never stopped.
They were only half-a-day’s ride from Houzicheng when a familiar sound caused Jinjin, who was driving, to rein the two horses to a halt. He turned and peered over the cover of the cart under which the teacher and the Miao girl rested following a meal. He’d heard the approach of galloping horses, and held the bamboo pole in both hands as a posse of imperial guards pulled up alongside them. The lead rider gave a short bow without dismounting.
“A message from the emperor’s court,” the man announced.
The drape covering the front of the cart was lifted. Feng’s face blinked at Jinjin in the sunlight, whilst in the darkness behind him the girl cowered amongst boxes of stale rice cakes, buns and dried fruit.
“The emperor? A message?” questioned Feng.
“For me?” queried Jinjin holding firmly onto the pole. The rider cocked his head to one side.
“For the emperor’s special agent,” he informed the boy. “One of you will know who that is.”
“But... “ began Jinjin.
“Report to Magistrate Minsheng in Houzicheng. He awaits you.” “The new magistrate? You...?”
Jinjin never finished his sentence. The riders kicked their horses and with a noise of hooves on loose stones, galloped off in clouds of dust. He waited for the air to clear before urging the horses forward. There was a short argument over whether they should go first to Wong’s to eat and let the girl wash and rest, or visit Minsheng as directed. Feng won. He was too eager to see the magistrate, find out what the emperor’s reward might be, and to learn news of his daughter. Besides, he was that special agent.
Mimi was tied to a post in the courtyard of the magistrate’s house. The teacher left Jinjin and Xiaopeng in the cart, realizing now the boy was to be trusted, whilst the manservant led him to the magistrate’s hall. Minsheng stood on the familiar rug, facing the other way, his hands clasped behind his back. The manservant coughed to alert his attention and left.
“Welcome back, fellow agent of the emperor,” announced the magistrate. “There on the table. Your Sung Po scroll. Take the thing. You’ll need it. Mind you, I’ve never seen much point in poetry. Or the pretence that you can change the meaning of things by making pretty characters with a calligraphy brush.” Feng picked up the scroll, uncertain how to ask. “Oh... and your reward from the emperor. Let’s just say I’ll forget the sword you lost, eh? Save you fifty blows.”
The stolen sword was the last thing on Feng’s mind. Until reminded, he’d forgotten all about it. Besides, he knew the magistrate was withholding something and by keeping his back turned he was sending the teacher a message.
“You have news from the villages?” asked the teacher. “We return with one of the girls. And the others, well, General Gao will decide.”
“Yes, General Gao. We have him to thank, too.”
“Do you have nothing to tell me? About my daughter?”
“I cannot interfere with Miao ways. As with the disappearing Miao girls, now with your daughter.”
Feng felt panic claw at his throat; his voice became weak.
“What do you mean? Now what with my daughter?”
“I told you. You’ll need the Sung Po scroll. It’s worth a small fortune though, as I said, why is a mystery to me.”
Feng hated the magistrate for playing games and for his annoying lack of directness. He’d now have to hurry back to the Miao village without stopping off at Wong’s inn. Cupping his hands together, he bowed to the magistrate’s broad shoulders and backed away.
“Aren’t you curious to know the emperor’s message?” asked Minsheng.
Feng stopped. Was this part of the ongoing game? He remembered their last encounter when he believed he was only a few Mimi lengths from death.
“Your excellency?”
“Friend, please. Despite what’s happened, call me ‘friend’. I do hope Master Tsu told you we agents expec
t no reward for serving our emperor.”
“What’s happened? In the village? My daughter? Have they harmed her?”
“You, teacher, you harmed her. She’s been a woman for too long and you stubbornly refused to see it. All because of your battle with that mean old marriage maker.”
The panic now took hold of every fibre in Feng’s body. He started to tremble.
“Tell me.” he began.
“I told you, I can’t interfere. And still you don’t ask the right question!” “Question?”
“The emperor’s message!”
Feng bowed again, as if this might help him to release some awful truth from the magistrate’s back.
“Yes. I was told to see you about a message from the emperor.” “Which I can only tell to the boy. Send him in.” “Your excellency?”
“Don’t think I’m ungrateful,” Minsheng continued. “Thanks to you we shan’t have to meet up again. There are changes, you see. The governor lost his head yesterday. It’s on its way to Chang’an with several others, including that of the empress. To be displayed outside the Imperial Palace. Those of her nephew and General Ma, too. And me? Well, as governor I’ll be able to raise an army. It’s what I’ve always wanted. So, thank you! Now send me the boy, please. You were never meant to be one of the eight. That was only Master Tsu’s idea - until the boy turned up.”
Clutching the scroll, Feng had to steady himself against a pillar on his way back to the courtyard. He felt faint, but to collapse in the house of Magistrate Minsheng was not an option. Jinjin jumped from the cart and came over to him.
“He wants to see you. I’ll leave with Xiaopeng,” Feng said. “She can ride the donkey.”
“Me? A reward?”
“Ask him,” replied the teacher. “I think you two will get on rather well together.”
The manservant appeared at the door to take Jinjin into the hall whilst Feng busied himself transferring Xiaopeng from the back of the cart to the donkey, taking with him the bamboo pole and some food and water. As he was untying Mimi, Jinjin reappeared, his face stretched into a broad grin. Feng glanced up briefly. For the first time he realised what it was about this urchin that troubled him. Before, he’d put it down to annoyance, but he now realised it was far more than that. The boy frightened him - worse even, terrified him.
“You have your reward, I see,” he said, pulling Mimi forwards.
“Yes. I’m coming with you.”
Feng’s heart sank. More of Jinjin was very the last thing he wanted. “Get back to Wong’s. Boast to the world how you saved China single-handed.”
“You’ll understand soon enough, teacher. I wish to see that daughter of yours. You also, I’ll wager.”
No further words were necessary, and none spoken, during that final leg of the journey back to Xiaopeng’s village. The Miao girl thought only of the little farmhouse, wondering how her baba could possibly have managed in her absence. Jinjin was already in a different world, on his way back to Chang’an where, if the Han girl were to match the image in his head, his brain promised him the life of a wealthy married mandarin with a magnificent courtyard home. Heaven! Teacher Feng feared the worst: that hell was the only reality he’d discover.
23 hello (literally ‘you good’)
A Scroll for a Life
Angwan was accepted back into the fold of the monastery. That he’d been given leave from his duties in the Miao village - the story he gave the sun wu kong - was not untrue, and thankfully the young monk he sought was still there. Side-by-side during prayer, Angwan whispered a suggested meeting place and time, and later that day, in a shaded bamboo grove, the two men
talked.
As Angwan suspected, Chou had got it wrong. It was the sun wu kong, not Chang, nor even the monastery, who had benefited from excessive taxation of those who ran the mills and of the peasants who worked the extensive lands owned by the monastery. The merchant had been spying on the sun wu kong, pretending to work for him whilst passing on information to the new magistrate. Most monks knew their head man had been supplying the White Tiger League with funds, and now it was only a matter of time. Once the White Tigers had been crushed, the monasteries would get ‘cleaned up’.
But Angwan hadn’t returned to the monastery to find out who had been behind the diversion of public money to a traitorous bunch of traders, nor was he too concerned whether or not the dead merchant had been implicated, although he’d have preferred to hear the man listed as guilty. He wanted to know what this particular monk had seen on the seventh day of the seventh month. And whom he had told.
***
In the Miao villagers’ eyes, Feier was the evil one for seducing the young priest and her fate lay in the hands of the village elders: almost certainly a beating in the village public space for all to witness. What had yet to be decided, when Feng discovered this, was whether it was to be a thick or a thin rod; thick, and she would die.
Yueloong saw no other way out. He’d admired Feier and enjoyed her company before his brother warned him about the effect she had on Angwan. Angered on learning this, he struggled briefly with the desire he felt for her blossoming body, but he was a man of honour, not one to be bewitched like the young priest by the spell of the teacher’s daughter.
“Only kissing,” she had claimed, blushing like a red phoenix, but Angwan had said she was now ‘his’ and that, since neither Feng nor Xiao-peng were likely ever to return, the young priest would be doing the farmer a favour by relieving him of the teacher’s child.
The farmer ignored his friend of old on first seeing him standing beside the black donkey in front of the post to which his water buffalo was secured. It was as if the other man wasn’t there. Xiaopeng ran from Mimi to her father and wept, and from the way she clung to him the man feared she’d been taken by the one who so nearly became emperor, and for this he also blamed the father of the Han slut. After he heard that his child was undamaged, having had Angwan stolen from her by Feier seemed all the more unbearable.
Feng, unaware of recent happenings in the Miao village, called out:
“I kept my promise, Yueloong! We brought her back. Unharmed! Thanks to my accomplice here. And he has to meet Feier. Is she in the schoolroom with the children? Turned them all into little scholars, no
doubt?”
Yueloong disengaged himself from Xiaopeng’s embrace and turned to face Feng. The teacher couldn’t work out that look on his face: a mix of disgust, of anger and sorrow.
“Yueloong, we did what we could! Why, if hadn’t been for Jinjin, she’d be in Chang’an with those other girls now, just another petal in our great emperor’s harem. So why the death look, my friend? And where’s Feier?”
“Where, you ask? Where’s your daughter-the-whore? I’ll tell you. She’s where she should be! In the criminal cage until the elders can decide her fate!” Feng stared in silent disbelief. Could the man truly be referring to Feier? “You planned this, didn’t you? All that talk about the evil marriage maker in your village - trying to get my sympathy, eh? And your pretence about wanting to help us get our girls back... that business about your murdered friend... I see it all. Taking advantage of my loss. An excuse to get your daughter into our village, so she could get her claws into him... you... you... “
He turned, grabbed Xiaopeng’s arm and pulled the girl into his house.
“Baba? What do you mean? What have you done to Feier?” the girl protested. Feng ran to the door.
“Yueloong, stop this nonsense! We’re friends, you and I. Just tell me what’s going on.”
“Your grand ideas about fancy education for girls - see what’s gone and happened! It’s those poems that did it! Why, if little Xiaopeng had the chance to learn what you stuffed into the head of that little whore of yours... well... “
Something flipped when Feng heard the name of his
daughter treated with disrespect. He strode up the farmer and, fist clenched, hit him full on the face. Yueloong staggered backwards, crashing into the stove, knocking a pan full of scalding water to the floor. Xiaopeng screamed:
“Stop, baba! Please stop!”
The two men, breathing like stags locked in battle, looked at the child.
“Take me to Feier! At once, baba!” demanded Xiaopeng.
Yueloong picked himself up and dusted down his tunic before reluctantly following his daughter and a friend-turned-enemy outside.
All the time, Jinjin stood by himself, silent, as if awaiting the right moment to enter the scene. Inside he seethed. Since first hearing about the girl, her gentleness and purity had become etched upon his mind as clearly as the White Tiger tattoo cut into the back of his hand. He’d waited for so long to see her with his eyes, not just hear about her loveliness through that lesser sense of the ears. Silent as a spring about to open, he followed the others to the village square, vowing vengeance on the man who had destroyed her purity; being both secret agent to the emperor and newly-appointed local magistrate, he had the power to mete out punishment.
Others in the street, recognising Feier’s father, joined them, and soon a small crowd had gathered in the public space. Feng stared in horror at the solitary bamboo cage. So these monsters had kept his little daughter cooped up in an animal cage! He’d kill anyone who had so much as touched a hair upon her sweet head! He watched whilst Xiaopeng approached the cage, untied the binding and raised the flap.
At first nothing happened and Feng feared the girl had died. Then her face appeared and the teacher stared in horror. Feier emerged, crawling stiffly on all fours, her tangled hair half-covering her face. The child’s spirit was gone, her body hunched and her feet bare, those small hands bleeding from beating in vain at the cruel bamboo poles that had held her trapped. Feng’s fury was so strong it rendered him without speech or power of movement for a few moments. Xiaopeng hugged her friend, stroking the older girl’s hair away from her tear-stained face.