The Mandate of Heaven

by Murgatroyd, Tim

  For an hour she paced her apartments, leaving the messenger outside. Finally she summoned him: ‘Inform my Honoured Father I shall obey all his instructions. But tell me, did the Salt Minister give you the letter himself?’

  The messenger shrugged. ‘A maid gave it to me.’

  Yun Shu could learn no more from him.

  * * *

  She arrived at Prince Arslan’s palace on the allotted day. Fourteen years earlier, before her marriage into the wretched Zhong clan, the palace compound occupied a third of its current size. Since then the Prince had decreed much of the area within Hou-ming’s city walls should be cleared of houses. Not to create vegetable patches for hungry folk but parkland where deer could graze and be hunted by his entourage.

  As Yun Shu arrived, a new boundary wall was being constructed by thousands of conscripted peasants. Dust drifted through the air, along with clouds of smoke. Many houses and other buildings – warehouses, temples, countless shops – had been either burned or dismantled. Their ash was shovelled over the soil to fertilise grass seeds specially imported from the north.

  Everywhere, one heard beating hammers and saws. Teams of men pushed wheelbarrows of roof tiles and earth and timber from broken houses to create artificial hills. Other peasants laboured in the spring sunshine to dig a lake modelled on the great Khan’s in the capital, Dadu.

  Soldiers stopped her palanquin at the barrier. Bo-Bai explained the Salt Minister’s invitation and they were waved through. Soon she entered an ornate gatehouse leading into the palace itself. Here the guards were more diligent. Yun Shu was forced to wave her letter, though none of the Prince’s elite Mongol bodyguard could read.

  Beyond the gate, Yun Shu lowered her head. When she had lived here – if one might call it living, rather dragging through day after day, year after year – she had slept among the servants, an outcast in her own family. Sensations flooded back: scrubbing, sweeping, a thousand petty humiliations. She pulled her Abbess’s robe and shawl tight to hide her face.

  They passed through lesser gates into a wide courtyard. Here she disembarked from the palanquin, leaving its sweating porters and Bo-Bai to await her return.

  Someone familiar, a slender woman approaching her thirtieth year, had been sent to greet her.

  ‘Pink Rose!’ cried Yun Shu. ‘You are still here!’

  Her old friend among the family maids had hardly changed. Pink Rose bowed very low. ‘Honoured Abbess,’ she said, ‘I beg you to follow.’

  Yun Shu smiled. ‘Call me by my proper name! Have you forgotten our whispered gossip while the house slept around us? I have not.’

  The maid looked around fearfully.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I have not forgotten.’

  The two women – for neither were girls any longer – glanced sideways until Yun Shu spoke. ‘Pink Rose, how are my family?’

  Her old friend’s expression clouded.

  ‘I must not say, Yun Shu! It is not for me to say. Who knows if we are being watched?’

  Yun Shu followed with a heavy heart. They passed courtyards bright with coloured flags and gilt carvings, not to mention crowds of idlers in silks maintained by taxes and government monopolies. Prince Arslan’s court had gained flocks of lackeys and hangers-on. The palace was a maze of staring eyes.

  They reached an area of houses allocated to high officials. Of all these, Salt Minister Gui possessed the grandest. Its familiar, low silhouette and ornate, upward-curving roof tiles filled Yun Shu’s eyes with uncontrollable tears.

  ‘This way,’ murmured Pink Rose.

  Yun Shu expected to be shown to the main audience room, there to prostrate herself before Father’s chair. Terror gripped her at the thought of his reproaches – and excitement, too, for once he had finished chastising they might begin again.

  Pink Rose gestured at a side door leading to a small courtyard garden.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Yun Shu.

  ‘We are already late, I shall get into trouble,’ urged Pink Rose.

  Yun Shu followed down a clean, well-swept corridor to a sliding door. Beyond lay a rectangular garden. Dozens of clay pots were laid out in patterns on the gravelled paths. Some contained fish, others miniature trees or blooming flowers. In the centre was a flagged area with a circular marble bench around a drooping willow. On the bench sat a beautiful lady in perfect make-up and silks, her silver hairpiece glinting in the sun. When Yun Shu looked more closely the illusion was dispelled.

  ‘Where is my father?’ Yun Shu said, looking round.

  Golden Lotus produced a fan. It clicked open and began to waft. ‘Please be seated.’ His voice was high-pitched and mellifluous.

  ‘Where is Honoured Father?’ repeated Yun Shu.

  Now the fan paused. ‘I can’t tell you until you sit beside me.’

  Yun Shu obliged, keeping a distance from her host. The scent of sandalwood itched in her nose. ‘Father is not here, is he?’

  ‘What a bright girl you are! Very bright!’

  Yun Shu watched him withdraw a packet of folded letters from his silk girdle bag. There were over a dozen and she recognised them at once.

  ‘My annual letters!’ she exclaimed. ‘How do you have them? They were sent to Father!’

  A faint smile played over Golden Lotus’s rouged lips.

  ‘I believe he never received them!’ cried Yun Shu.

  The fan wafted back and forth. ‘Your father is away at the Salt Pans,’ he said. ‘Does it surprise you that I wish to see my stepdaughter?’

  Yun Shu did not disguise her scorn. ‘I was never that.’

  ‘Oh, but you were. Your Father commanded it. Did you come here, even now, to disobey him?’

  ‘No,’ said Yun Shu, hating the tremor in her voice, ‘of course not. But …’

  ‘There can be no buts,’ said Golden Lotus, mildly. ‘One either obeys or one is disobedient. That is all.’

  Yun Shu dabbed her eyes with a sleeve as Golden Lotus opened one of the letters.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘written in your seventeenth year. It begs forgiveness.’ He opened another. ‘So does this, written only two years ago.’

  Yun Shu’s head was lowered, tears upon her cheeks. She glanced up. Golden Lotus had risen, his delicate, manicured hands clenched as he stepped uncertainly over the crunching gravel with his tiny, lotus feet, graceful as a dancer even in the midst of his agitation.

  ‘No one thinks of me!’ he exclaimed. ‘How often I am unhappy! All people consider is themselves. Your Honoured Father is so very clever! His Excellency Jebe Khoja trusts him to write all his reports concerning taxes. Letters sealed with Prince Arslan’s own seal that go straight to the Great Khan. But, oh, his moods! Only I know how to bring him peace. He would never have reached his exalted position without me.’

  Yun Shu stared fearfully at Golden Lotus. His outburst reminded her of the time he had tried to bind her feet, nearly twenty years before.

  ‘What has this to do with me?’ she asked.

  Golden Lotus subsided and resumed his seat on the bench. ‘Do you really not know what has happened?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I will tell you.’

  Still he paused, once again fanning himself.

  ‘Your two brothers are dead,’ he murmured in his gentle falsetto, ‘or so we believe. First Son got involved with a lesser prince in the court. We do not really know. It seems this prince had ambitions beyond his stature. Certainly, the prince has been banished. And so have your brothers, along with many of the prince’s friends and followers. Only their banishment …’ Golden Lotus’s eyes filled with tears. ‘It was the kind that lasts forever! Their handsome young bodies are lost to us! We do not know where they are buried. Yet we dare not mourn in public, in case Prince Arslan thinks dear Gui is disloyal to the Great Khan. Those poor, foolish boys!’

  The fan grew agitated as it rose and dipped. Yun Shu knew she should wail, weep, lament so close a loss. She felt nothing. Perhaps even a secret gladness. Her brothers h
ad always been strangers. Now, with their deaths, Father’s attention became a possibility. Golden Lotus evidently sensed her reaction, for he nodded.

  ‘Everything has changed. Your Father cannot bear to think of it. Not yet. So angry! So miserable! Nothing I do or say calms him.’

  The scent of sandalwood in Yun Shu’s nostrils intensified as Golden Lotus leaned forward, placing his hand on her knee. Her breath caught, paralysed by his touch.

  ‘And that,’ he said, ‘is why I wanted to speak with you.’

  Their faces were an arm’s length apart. She exhaled slowly and shrank back. Still the pressure of his hand lay on her knee.

  ‘Why?’ she said. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘I have an offer,’ Golden Lotus’s hand withdrew and he grew businesslike. ‘If you ceased to be Abbess, you could become a wife. I could arrange that, Yun Shu. You could live here with your husband – I have one in mind, young, strong, handsome, a minor official in your father’s service who would do whatever you like – especially when it came to making grandsons for the Salt Minister. All disobedience would be forgotten. And my dear Gui would have a future for which to gather wealth, in the form of his grandsons.’

  Yun Shu’s mouth felt uncomfortably dry. She rose and bowed.

  ‘I will mourn my brothers,’ she said. ‘And petition Heaven for their favourable rebirth.’

  Golden Lotus fanned himself. ‘I did not expect you to agree at once,’ he said. ‘But do not imagine you will always be Abbess of Cloud Abode Monastery. Think of the Buddhists from Tibet! If you lived here we could keep each other company while the Salt Minister is away. I suspect you, too, are lonely. How pleasant it would be for us both!’

  Yun Shu wished to hear no more. She left with a hurried bow.

  Yet Golden Lotus’s suggestion of children touched longings that grew deeper each year, however hard she suppressed them. Inevitably she remembered her last meeting with Teng. It had seemed – for she knew he’d felt the same – he would have satisfied those longings.

  Yun Shu wept silently in the palanquin all the way to Cloud Abode Monastery. Golden Lotus’s sad, watchful eyes and insinuating singsong voice seemed to shadow her progress.

  ‘Your thoughts drift from the Great Work.’

  Yun Shu glanced up guiltily at Worthy Master Jian. ‘I apologise, Master.’

  They were kneeling side by side in the lowest level of Wild Goose Pagoda, meditating upon the cosmic journey ahead. Even after his reproach, Yun Shu’s focus dissolved as soon as it hardened. She glanced sideways through half-opened lids at the Worthy Master, cross-legged on the mat beside her, his eyes closed. An unfamiliar odour hung upon his breath, rank and metallic. He sighed and relaxed his posture.

  ‘I see we will make no progress until you are emptied of speculation,’ he said.

  Lately the handsome Worthy Master had aged rather than attained the sheen and luminosity of an Immortal. His yellowish skin and thinning grey hair reminded her of the priest called Void: as did a new intensity in the Worthy Master’s gaze.

  ‘I can tell from your sniff you have detected the scent of the Great Reverted Cinnabar within me,’ he said, not without pride.

  ‘Worthy Master,’ said Yun Shu, ‘please explain.’

  For once he seemed happy to share his secrets. Even inclined to provoke a little admiration and wonder.

  ‘I know you are not insensitive to the Dao,’ he said. ‘You must sense my progress in the Immortal Work. And the reason for my success? Ha! Here I may well garner a little credit.’ His voice slurred as though tipsy.

  ‘You would not believe the care one must take. And the expense! Pearls ground to powder, mica, sulphur, mercury and essence of gold! Then again, what of those apparently simple ingredients that turn out to be as rare as a prince’s treasure? Silver-grey mushrooms with seven spots in exactly the same shape as the Seven Primes! Apricot kernels ground to dust and salted with powdered mother-of-pearl! You see, the bamboo strips revealed several paths to Immortality. Oh, the care one must take when heating one’s cauldron!’

  Yun Shu listened with a growing sense of dismay. Were the ancient treasures of Cloud Abode Monastery being squandered on this? Were the donations of the faithful being frittered on bizarre concoctions? Wealth that could purchase food and shelter for the hungry! Oh, she knew very well how Teng would have judged the Worthy Master’s priorities.

  ‘Sometimes there are errors,’ he continued, ‘terribly expensive waste. How could there not be? I confess freely to nights of vomiting and loose bowels. Yet each reverse brings me nearer … You look unhappy! You feel concern for my health!’ The Worthy Master frowned. ‘Your concern does not interest me,’ he said, coldly. ‘You disappoint me.’

  She could contain herself no longer. ‘Forgive me, but I am afraid! Your skin is grainy as old parchment. I fear the bamboo books are false. False counsellors. After all, did their original owner gain Immortality? Or did he turn to dust?’

  Worthy Master Jian rose angrily, pacing before the lectern where the ancient books rested. ‘This is how you repay my trust in you!’ he cried. ‘Of course there is trial and error, you foolish, deluded woman.’ Unhealthy blotches streaked his pale face. ‘You have no idea,’ he continued, ‘how I protect you. Even now the Buddhists from Tibet are offering me a sliver of the Buddha’s knucklebone for my elixir. All they want in return is Cloud Abode Monastery. Do not tempt me by betraying my trust, Yun Shu!’

  She was sobbing now, dabbing at her tears with a prayer shawl. His tall, thin body leaned over her like a shadow.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I trade a mere building for the greatest prize! Why shouldn’t I?’ Yun Shu shrank in horror. ‘Do not tempt me!’ he cried. ‘Do not!’

  Then, staring down at her weeping figure, he shook his head as though clearing his mind. Still her sobs continued.

  ‘Yun Shu,’ he said, in a calm voice. ‘I have distressed you.’ She sniffed, trying to master her tears. ‘I regret my lack of balance. I was at fault. You are no use to our rites unless you are serene.’

  As her weeping subsided, he sat beside her on the mat, gentle and wise once more. A faint desperation in his eyes softened Yun Shu’s fear to reluctant pity.

  ‘You see,’ he said, ‘life has taught me a perfect horror of death. No doubt you think that unbalanced? Impious, even. Yet consider how we die a little each day in a thousand ways. Our thoughts arise then vanish. Our breaths come and go. We glimpse a swallow flitting over a twilit sky, hear its song, then it has gone. Friends of one’s youth decay and change until barely recognisable. Father, Mother, Brother, Sister, all share their moment until – like glints of sunshine on a pool obscured by cloud – their light vanishes.’

  She listened closely.

  ‘Yun Shu, how I have meditated upon these things! Over and over! Compare the coarsening of my hair and teeth and skin with that enjoyed heedlessly, thoughtlessly by foolish youth! And death itself, the pain and humiliation as one’s spirit shudders from the body to beg before the Infernal Judges in hell. Who knows what reincarnation and birth one must endure next time? What dreadful lives one has already endured. The tedium of starting yet again, learning and re-learning all life’s lessons only to have that knowledge snuffed in a cruel instant!’

  He paused, rubbing his hands, a smile of dreamy elation on his face.

  ‘But to become an Immortal, Yun Shu! To attain full realisation! Then life and death flow and weave together. Always happy, whether loitering in Heaven or wandering the world. Eternally poised to act for the good of all creatures! What demons I would exorcise, how many sick people I would heal! Yun Shu, is that not worth a little suffering? To control the rivers and mountains! Anything at all! Playful as a child, sage as Lao Tzu! Yet we have not even attained the Stage of Shen.’

  He stopped and she stared up at his flushed face. Then her heart hardened.

  ‘If we attain the Stage of Shen,’ she said, ‘you must promise to save Cloud Abode Monastery.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘tha
t I can promise.’

  He drew a silver box from his robes. Inside were pills of crushed dates mingled with secret essences and autumn minerals.

  ‘Eat seven of these and so shall I,’ he whispered. ‘Meditate all the while upon the Weaver Maid and her union with the Cosmic Herdboy.’

  They chewed and swallowed together until the pills were gone. Soon his eyes were unnaturally glazed and bright, as she sensed her own must be. Warmth glowed in her deepest cinnabar chambers and her breath quickened uncomfortably. Her heart beat too fast.

  He led her up a staircase round the circular walls of the pagoda to the second storey. Her palms felt hot and each step brought a deeper haze.

  Twenty-eight

  Sometimes, to distract himself from the pain infecting every limb and muscle, Teng imagined he was a long-legged crane. In this guise, while he hacked at sticky wet soil, his spirit soared free. Up he flew, flapping round the huge wooden derrick – an ungainly pyramid fifteen men high, in the midst of which a great vertical drill rose and fell to batter bedrock deep below the earth’s surface. Up he flew, until he was circling on currents of warm, clean air, untainted by the swamp below.

  Aloft the world gained colourful, tempting horizons. North lay the body of Six-hundred-li Lake, dotted with islands like green stepping stones he might follow all the way home. To the west blue mountains rose, wreathed in mysterious cloud. Among them was Holy Mount Chang and Lingling County, the possibility of help and friends. But as he circled in his imagination, Teng could think of no way to get there. So he looked east, following the shore of the lake north a full hundred li to Chenglingji Port and a civilized road to Hou-ming. That, too, was a way he could not take. Then he looked south, across endless reed beds and salt marsh, treacherous mud and barren hills where only thorns and stubborn scrub found a roothold. A dangerous, harsh, circuitous route home; a way almost too fearful to be attempted.