The Mandate of Heaven

  Frustrated in every direction, the circling spirit-crane looked downward. Then the Salt Pans’ pitiless grandeur overwhelmed Teng’s imagination. Daunted, he resumed whatever backbreaking task he had been assigned …

  ‘Put more into it, Teng! Remember what I told you.’

  The quiet but insistent voice belonged to Foreman Wu Mao, a grizzled, thin young man with muscles hard as bamboo. His words pierced the fog of exhaustion in Teng’s brain. What must he remember? What must he remember? Yes! That if they did not reach bedrock by sunset their whole work gang would be punished. That meant no food … He dug his spade into the wet, crumbly soil and feverishly filled a bucket.

  ‘That’s it, Teng! Only dig with a slow, steady rhythm.’ Foreman Wu Mao’s voice floated. Vanished. Still he dug and dug until each spade load of earth weighed as much as Monkey Hat Hill. They were lucky that day. The work gang exceeded the target set by Chief Overseer Pi-tou. That night they ate …

  Now he had been promoted. No longer digging the hole that surrounded the borehole into the bedrock, he had been assigned one handle of a two-man pump. Up, down, up, down … Thick, milky brine spurted from a bamboo pipe into a huge, cast iron pan already coated with a crust of precious crystals. Flames roared beneath the pan, fed by gas charged with the sun’s essence that burned ceaselessly, piped up from the earth and distributed along snaking tangles of bamboo tubes. Sometimes there were explosions. Eruptions of back-drafting flame would set a dozen men ablaze. Today the flame burned submissively and Teng pumped up, down, up, down, his spine and legs aching, hands raw on the wooden handle until the huge iron pan bubbled and frothed.

  ‘You two! Drink!’ urged Foreman Wu Mao, offering a bucket. ‘No charge for water in my floating oriole house! It keeps your yang strong!’

  Swaying with exhaustion oddly like nausea, Teng did as instructed, gulping earthy water with more pleasure than he had many an exquisite wine …

  ‘Lazy slaves! Do not wait for it to cool!’

  With that barked command, Overseer Pi-tou strode off to the next work gang tending their garden of salt, to repeat the same bellowed order. Foreman Wu Mao was left with his forehead pressed into mud, alongside the dozen members of their gang. When he rose, his normally measured voice was edged with fear.

  ‘You heard the Overseer! We should not wait for it to cool! Fetch wet rags!’

  These he wrapped round his bare feet and hands. Using a ladder, he climbed the still scalding cast iron pan, making no complaint other than a grunt when his skin brushed the metal. Shovel load after shovel load of salt crystals were poured into buckets before Foreman Wu Mao could stand no more.

  ‘Each must take a turn,’ he gasped. ‘We must finish this before he comes back.’

  When Teng climbed the ladder he felt faint. Swirls of noxious fumes from the burning sun essence and steaming brine left him giddy. He tried to use the spade accurately but his face was melting like wax in the shimmering heat, his forehead blistering painfully. The first shovel load emptied into an upheld bucket, as did the second. The third missed entirely, landing on the muddy ground. Teng bent to scrape up a fourth when an angry roar stopped him.

  ‘Get that fool down from there!’

  Hands grabbed his ankles. He was dragged from the ladder until he knelt, whooping pure air on the wet ground.

  ‘Why, it’s the gentleman scholar!’ crowed a harsh, self-satisfied voice. ‘I’ve had orders about our gentleman scholar.’

  Teng understood his bad luck. Overseer Pi-tou had happened to wander past their derrick and seen the salt wasted by his clumsiness.

  ‘Hey, Wu Mao!’ barked Pi-tou. ‘For squandering salt your gang gets half rations tonight.’

  If it had been prudent to moan, all Teng’s comrades would have done so. As it was, they averted their eyes from Overseer Pi-tou’s hawk-like face and shaven head.

  ‘Well then, punish him for it! All of you!’

  Teng’s fellow slaves and indentured labourers were prodded into a line by Overseer Pi-tou’s soldiers and, one by one, kicked or punched Teng as he knelt. A smirk crept across the Overseer’s face.

  ‘That’s the way to do it! Eh, scholar?’

  Even in the midst of the beating Teng realised his comrades’ blows possessed more show than force. At the word scholar, Foreman Wu Mao cast him a quick, searching look.

  That night Teng lay beneath a single blanket on the wet earth. It was drizzling. The southern end of the lake was famous for its rainfall and he had grown used to constantly grey skies. Even through the steam evaporating from hundreds of boiling, simmering iron pans, he had noted the way swells of light gilded the rain-clouds above, how they billowed in the wind like dragons puffing out their chests. Perhaps misery unlocked these insights. Certainly he had never noticed such things so deeply; insights that made him long for brush and ink and paper to capture a little of what he had learned.

  Those were harsh lessons. Every moment of every hour haunted by pictures – Deng Mansions burning, roofs collapsing with sprays of sparks, smoke, roars of wind-fed flame … And the certainty his actions had brought disaster upon their ancestral home. Through his greed and vanity, believing he could make fools of their enemies. Clever Deng Teng! Now, for all he knew, his own father was dead, burned alive as he sought to extinguish the flames. At best, cast adrift without a home, sick and frail, in need of medicine to suppress the malign mushrooms detected in his wizened frame by the doctor. Teng knew no means to discover the truth. Asking questions in the Salt Pans would be madness, especially if Overseer Pi-tou found out – as he was sure to do.

  Teng shivered beneath his blanket. Strength seeded by Deng Nan-shi’s tales of the Deng clan’s natural greatness and fitness to rule put out roots. Strange, perhaps, it should germinate in the mud of the Salt Pans. Yet Teng understood the only restitution he could offer his ancestors. He must restore the glorious name of Deng. At the very least, there must be sons. And surely that same rich, nutritious blood-broth would sustain him while lesser men perished. The blood that had run through Hero-general Yueh Fei: the curse and blessing of his destiny.

  More than that, less filial but closer to his heart, he remembered Yun Shu’s animated face as they talked in the moon-gazing pavilion. She had revealed her innermost feelings. Feelings he shared with all his heart. For both their sakes he would find a way back to Hou-ming. Of all the good he had ever known, she seemed best.

  That night Deng Teng embraced a stark choice. Accept this hellish place until he escaped or deny reality and perish. His first act of acceptance was sleep.

  He awoke at dawn to find Foreman Wu Mao looking down at him.

  ‘Eat now since you had nothing last night,’ he said.

  Teng eagerly took the bowl and shovelled yesterday’s cold rice into his mouth. When he dropped a few grains, he scooped them up and devoured them with a sauce of dirt. Running his finger round the wooden bowl, he licked until every dreg of starch and sustenance had been consumed.

  ‘You’re a scholar, eh?’ asked Foreman Wu Mao.

  Teng nodded, laughed hoarsely. ‘Fully literate,’ he said, ‘with ink for blood.’ Then he shrank back: the foreman might not know words like literate and punish Teng for his ignorance. But Wu Mao seemed to savour the unfamiliar syllables.

  ‘Lit-er-ate,’ he said. Then more forcefully: ‘Literate. It means, I think, you read and write well.’

  Teng nodded. ‘You understand exactly.’

  ‘We shall talk later,’ promised the Foreman, rising to ensure the other labourers had been fed.

  That day Teng was assigned the task of jumping on a wooden board to compress salt crystals into square bricks. An easier job than pumping or digging, yet one he could barely manage. His face and body were purple with bruises from the beating decreed by Overseer Pi-tou.

  Later, as the work gang gathered for warmth round the gas flame, Foreman Wu Mao sat beside Teng. He seemed uneasy and Teng sensed why. It was a feeling he had learned as a boy when he wanted to ask Hsiung for a f
avour but feared to lose face.

  ‘Foreman,’ he said, softly, ‘you are thinking I can be of service in some way.’ Wu Mao looked at him suspiciously. ‘Do you read minds, scholar?’

  ‘No,’ said Teng, remembering Ying-ge’s betrayal, ‘I wouldn’t be here if I could.’

  After Wu Mao had explained his difficulty, which was more his family’s than his own, Teng nodded. ‘Paper, ink, brush,’ he said. ‘That is all I need.’

  Once these were produced he composed a letter on behalf of Foreman Wu Mao’s First Brother, who also led a work gang in the Salt Pans, to negotiate a favourable dowry with a distant cousin in a village south of Chenglingji famous for its apricots. Teng, relishing the feel of the brush, took special care. By the time he had finished, the entire work gang surrounded him, whispering as though a rite was being enacted. So it was. The rite of all civilized men to create and record and share thoughts.

  After Teng read the letter aloud – including a prolonged and passionate appeal to the bride’s family for a large dowry – Foreman Wu Mao whistled through his few remaining teeth.

  ‘Strong!’ he muttered. ‘I’ll take it to my brothers and uncles. With a letter like that they might throw in a bride for me!’

  Married foremen were allowed huts in an enclosure of their own. However, the Salt Authorities insisted on taxation of the dowry to such a degree that many could not afford to marry. For this reason, younger brothers like Wu Mao often went without a bride.

  Weeks later the reply arrived: Teng’s letter had so impressed the local Sub-prefect (who had been paid a suitable fee for reading it) that he instructed the bride’s family to agree the marriage terms without haggling. As a result, Wu Mao’s First Brother moved into his own hut upon immediate receipt of wife and dowry.

  ‘We will talk later,’ said Foreman Wu Mao, his face flushed with satisfaction. Teng was left to wonder what about.

  Once enslaved or indentured in the Salt Pans a man’s world dwindled. The past grew unreal, especially the consolation of happier times. Sixteen hours of toil each day, brief feeds, the discharge of bodily functions, all conducted in view of one’s gang. Perhaps half an hour’s muttered talk round the gas flame before exhausted sleep.

  A man’s vision dwindled, too, reduced to the tool in his hands or snatched glimpses of the sky. If one scaled the high wooden derrick with its drill for deepening the borehole that allowed access to the precious salt-brine, there was little to see. Countless similar derricks spread across the swamp for several li in all directions and hundreds of iron pans emitted wreaths of steam into the dank air. On the landward side, one could trace the extent of the boundary walls and towers protecting the Salt Pans and imprisoning its thousands of toiling ants. Or even examine the fortress compound where the Salt Minister’s bureaux and warehouses were located, along with barracks of bored, restless soldiers. If one looked out across the lake, scores of small islands surrounded by rings of mud rose from the shallow waters to form a natural defensive barrier against marauding fleets. A desolate place unless one was a bird. White gulls, herons and cranes gathered in huge numbers to feast on tiny creatures in the mud and darken the sky at dusk and sunset.

  Teng kept his eyes and ears open. He had been transported to the Salt Pans in chains at the beginning of autumn. Five months later, his body had hardened and grown tolerant of pains that, before his arrest, would have set him squealing. Only fools squealed in the Salt Pans. Weakness invited attempts by other slaves to steal your rations and clothes. In the case of pretty youths, more intimate treasures were looted.

  Teng knew he was lucky to have gained the confidence of Foreman Wu Mao. Through him he heard rumours that Jebe Khoja had arrived at the Salt Pans shortly before New Year. When he left, half the garrison appeared to sail with him.

  ‘It is a ruse,’ revealed Foreman Wu Mao, as they sat beside the dancing blue flame one cold evening.

  ‘How so?’ asked Teng.

  The younger man examined him. Then he seemed to decide. In that moment Teng knew he had gained a huge advantage against the fate Salt Minister Gui intended for him.

  ‘Word has reached my friends that the Mongols merely gather in villages up the coast, ready to issue forth in fleets of small boats. They are waiting for something. Or someone.’

  Teng nodded thoughtfully. ‘The jaws of a trap,’ he murmured.

  Foreman Wu Mao held out his hands to the flame so they seemed to glow, but said no more. Teng wondered who these well-informed friends might be.

  Another evening, Foreman Wu Mao’s burly brothers and uncles arrived at their derrick and muttered in a close huddle, passing round leather wineskins. Teng tactfully withdrew to the shelter of the boiling pan and tried to sleep. He was awoken by a gentle tug on his shoulder.

  ‘We need your services,’ whispered Foreman Wu Mao.

  Teng, who slept in damp clothes and rotting shoes, rose at once. He was led to the circle of Wu Mao’s relatives, who assessed him coldly. Remembering he was a Deng and they – whatever the ironies of their current positions – mere labourers, Teng returned their gaze.

  ‘Deng Teng,’ said Foreman Wu Mao, holding out the same cheap paper, ink and brush he had used before. ‘Write the following, if you please: Separate must become together.’

  Teng looked at him curiously. But asking was dangerous in the Salt Pans. The question was, who would receive it, and why. ‘Nothing more?’ he asked.

  Wu Mao nodded. It took little time to oblige. He was then dismissed to his blanket while the foreman’s brothers and uncles disappeared into the night to rejoin their own work gangs, for their clan had toiled in the Salt Pans for three generations. This fact gave Teng a chance to extend his influence.

  ‘Tell me, Wu Mao,’ he said, a few days later, ‘were the Salt Pans like this in the previous dynasty?’

  The foreman granted him one of his sharp looks. ‘Why do you ask, scholar? Are you going to write a history? I’ll warn you now, no one cares about the likes of us. All they care about is how much salt we send.’

  Teng threw caution aside, explaining the exalted rank of his Grandfather and all that the Dengs had lost by the change of dynasty.

  Wu Mao replied with new respect: ‘No wonder Overseer Pi-tou has been instructed to take special care of you.’

  He answered Teng’s original question: though life had been hungry under the Song Dynasty, conditions had been easier, wages higher and taxes lower. Above all, there had been no slaves to reduce the earnings of the salt workers and no omnipotent tyrants like Overseer Pi-tou with the power of instant life and death. Worse, many of the old salt-working families were being enslaved as a punishment for spurious debts invented by the Salt Bureau. It was well known these unfortunate wretches’ wages – no longer payable because they had been re-classified as slaves – were stolen by Bureau officials. As a result, many salt workers had fled to join the Red Turbans.

  ‘Perhaps the old conditions could be restored,’ said Teng, ‘if we were not ruled by foreign devils.’

  Wu Mao looked round nervously. No one could overhear.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he replied.

  When Deng Teng climbed the wooden derrick to inspect the Salt Pans, he always paid particular attention to the fortress compound. That walled rectangle crammed with buildings was the beating heart of power in this dismal place. And things were stirring in its hidden chambers.

  One day he said to Foreman Wu Mao: ‘I have noticed many soldiers on the walls of the fortress. This seems impossible when half the garrison so publicly sailed away.’

  They were inspecting bamboo pipes for leakages.

  ‘What goes away with great show can return in secret,’ said the Foreman. ‘Hold the pipe straight! Let us be thankful Overseer Pi-tou’s men did not find this leak before us.’

  When it had been sealed, Teng said: ‘That is not all. I noticed lines of men with large packs on their backs, all tied together like a train of mules and whipped along by guards. They seemed to be taking a road through the m
arshes into the hills.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Wu Mao, ‘the Salt Minister maintains an illicit trade with customers in the southern lands where hardly any officials dare go. Those men carry blocks of pure salt and are forbidden to untie them from their backs on pain of death. They even sleep with them on.’

  Teng considered this as Wu Mao caulked another bamboo water pipe.

  ‘How corrupt the Middle Kingdom has grown,’ sighed Teng, unconsciously using a favourite phrase of his father’s. ‘The Mandate of Heaven must surely pass into worthier hands.’

  Foreman Wu Mao straightened and examined him in his careful way.

  ‘There are others who believe that,’ he said, softly. ‘My whole clan believe it and are ready to act. I tell you, the Buddha Maitreya is coming to cleanse the world! Then a new golden age shall begin, my friend. The Great Togetherness will unite all people! Look around you: famine, war, signs in the sky. Proofs are everywhere.’

  ‘You are a Red Turban,’ whispered the scholar. ‘So was my father! So am I.’

  Foreman Wu Mao nodded. ‘I sensed you were a good man. Here’s another leak. We will talk of this later.’

  Later, always later. Teng sometimes wondered if he would survive long enough to hear the foreman’s revelations. He was ordered to haul timber for a neighbouring derrick, leaving Foreman Wu Mao to fulfil his quota with a reduced number of hands. Teng dragged bundles of bamboo logs over the mud, slipping and sliding when they stuck until, with a heave, he advanced a little further. Such agonies interested Chief Overseer Pi-tou. Teng sometimes noticed him watching avidly.

  Perhaps this, and the certainty he could not endure such treatment, drove Teng to desperate intentions. He would be avenged, whatever the cost! As he lay beneath his blanket, Teng pondered the apparent withdrawal of Jebe Khoja’s garrison. What prey did they hope to lure? He suspected it dwelt in Lingling County, proclaiming rebellion and the cause of Yueh Fei. In short, Jebe Khoja hoped to trap and destroy the Red Turbans led by the Noble Count of Lingling, once and for all.