Taming Poison Dragons (19 page)

‘Gentlemen!’ he roared. ‘What is worse than a traitor?

For this wretch was born a son of Han, like any one of us!’

The crowd gasped. Drums began to beat, building in intensity.

‘This dog was taken by the Kin and served them willingly for twelve long years! I tell you, he betrayed his own people until the day of his capture! Behold the Han-barbarian! Is he not an offence against nature? Is he not an animal, a bear? Now see the bear dance!’

The crowd bellowed. The drum reached a crescendo.

Then the hooded archer was firing, aiming at the feet of the man. How he danced! Crossbow after crossbow twanged, bolt after bolt thudded into the ground. The Han-barbarian capered and lurched. The crowd roared with laughter. Here was victory, at last! Our all-powerful enemy humbled! Hot faces surrounded me, half-open mouths.

Abruptly the crowd fell silent. The archer, for all his skill, had fired too close. A bolt protruded obscenely from the target’s waist. He tottered, fell backwards. I remember a sensation of disgust, for I could not hate this pitiful creature.

‘Fifty
cash
for such a spectacle!’ screamed the “general”. ‘See how he bleeds!’

His servants ran through the crowd, collecting
cash
.

Finally I stood alone by the rope barrier, filled with a strange notion. And far too much wine.

‘Is that fellow a slave?’ I demanded of the mountebank.

‘Yes, Honourable Sir. And I have a document to prove it, bearing the seal of Assistant Sub-prefect Wan Li himself!’

He was sweating from his exertions, cooling himself with a large, blue fan.

‘He’s not much use to you now,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry, sir. Come back in an hour’s time! I have a real devil from the steppes to replace him.’

‘Is the wounded man for sale?’ I asked.

‘Eh?’

The “general” examined me with new interest.

‘A dancing Han-barbarian is worth a lot,’ he said, sternly.

‘Not if he’s about to die. I’ll give a thousand for him.’

What possessed me to make such an offer, I’ll never know. You might call it compassion. Or nobility of spirit.

Was it merely to prove myself different, and better, than my fellows? I remember thinking how I would boast to my friends that I had saved a man, as a kind of joke.

We finally settled on two thousand and the “general” seemed pleased with his bargain. Well he might be. I’m sure I only agreed because I was drunk, and stubborn. I dared not imagine what Cousin Hong would say.

When the slave was carried out, he seemed more dead than alive. Then the responsibility I had assumed sobered me.

I looked round for P’ei Ti, but my friend had vanished.

I was about to give up on him when I saw him emerging from one of the boy-prostitutes’ booths, his face strangely flushed. In a moment I had turned away. I’m sure he never saw I knew.

My new servant was carried back to my pavilion in a hired litter, groaning all the way. He took up residence on a pile of blankets, and for several weeks contended with oblivion. Throughout this trial he rambled in his sleep, using a barbarous language I did not recognise. When awake, he would fix me with a feverish gaze until his eyeballs rolled. A most disturbing sight! I could not afford a doctor, so I bathed his wound in the water I boiled for tea.

At the height of his sickness, I spooned rice gruel into his mouth.

His wound reeked of unwholesome humours. It was mottled with liverish oozes, green pus, enough to make any doctor curious. Yet I was no medical student.

However, I did notice a dozen old scars on his thin body.

Of course my friends made fun of my eccentricity in nursing him. One, a stern supporter of the Ceaseless War party at court, chided me for showing lenience to the enemy. It was true that although the Han-barbarian looked like one of us, there was something suspect about the man. Something indefinably foreign.

Finally he lapsed into a coma. I had little hope he would awake. Two thousand
cash
! For nothing! I wasn’t even sure where I would bury him. And I still didn’t know the poor fellow’s name.

In disgust, I took a flask of wine and writing equipment to a flat rock by the lakeside. It was early evening. Houses and pagodas along the shore, people-specks moving, softened by dusk. I paddled my bare toes in the water and forgot the Han-barbarian. My thoughts rolled across the lake to the far shore, where Su Lin’s cottage stood. And my imagination spun webs of desire.

How clearly I pictured her, freshly returned from singing at a fashionable wedding. . . How she slowly dis-robed, layer after silken layer, until naked. How she called to her maid for warm water, then yawned, stretched. Fine beads of sweat on her forehead and arm-pits. How she washed away make-up from her oval face with languid sighs. Water-beads dripped on her up-turned breasts. Tiny rivulets ran down the flat of her stomach, to tickle her black rose. How she slipped her arms into a robe held open by the silent maid. The dense pile of her long, black hair loose around her shoulders. In a pleading voice, she summoned a cup of wine and took it to the window.

There she sipped restlessly. Her almond eyes reached out across West Lake, seeking my house, wondering what I thought and felt. . . So I imagined. And longed.

Without pausing, I wrote a verse. Later, when it became hugely popular, some called for the poem to be banned, due to its provocative second line:

She washes kohl-lined eyes, almond eyes,
Make-up skeins of black in a jade bowl.

Pigments disperse as soon as friendship,
Making the water grey. Throw it away.

Wise heads have lived this before.

Is a dream of love all my reward?

I wrote feverishly that evening, dissolving my ink-cake in the lake water, filling sheet after sheet. When I arose, I felt light-headed. Embers of sun were fading behind the hills. I wandered back to my house and found a strange figure seated in the doorway, clutching his waist.

‘So you have awoken!’ I cried.

To my further surprise, he lowered himself awkwardly, groaning with each movement, and did homage.

Befuddled as I was by wine and poetry, I did not know what to say.

*

‘Sit down, you fool,’ I said, after a pause. ‘You’ll re-open your wound!’

Slowly, painfully, he resumed his former position. We regarded each other.

‘Are you hungry?’ I asked.

‘Had. . . the rice you left,’ he gasped.

His accent was peculiar. I could not place it. I refrained from mentioning that, actually, it was my own dinner he had eaten.

‘Tell me who you are.’

He would not reply. In the end, I helped him to his pile of blankets in the kitchen, where he straightaway fell asleep.

The Han-barbarian’s recovery was slow and fitful. Apart from ensuring he was well fed, I was too busy with my friends to think about him. When I sought him out, he proved so taciturn that I wondered if he was a simpleton like Cousin Yi-Yi. I did eventually drag a name from him: Mi Feng. At least that was the name he told me.

One night, a month after his feverish coma had lifted, I returned drunk and singing from a party, to find Mi Feng chopping wood by starlight, each blow accompanied by a grunt of pain. He seemed to be enjoying himself, so I allowed him to finish, before saying: ‘Mi Feng, do put the axe down. I really think it is time we talked.’

He examined me warily.

‘Come, sit on the ground before me. I have a few questions.’

He did as instructed.

‘Tell me a little about yourself.’

‘You have saved my life,’ he said, cautiously.

Now we were getting somewhere.

‘That is right. But what kind of life have you led? That is what I want to know. And, in particular, how did you end up as target practice in the Imperial Pleasure Ground?’

Mi Feng had clearly anticipated this question. He launched straight into a fanciful tale of being conscripted to work as a labourer, repairing fortifications on the frontier. According to his account, the Kin barbarians captured his entire company and he was sold as a slave.

After years on the steppes, he managed to escape and fled back to civilization, disguised as a Jurchen warrior.

Whereupon, he was declared an enemy by our forces and sold to the mountebank.

When he had finished, I raised a single, questioning eyebrow.

‘Are you quite sure?’ I asked, softly.

He bared his gums in a most alarming way and picked up his axe.

‘I’m sure there is no need for that,’ I said, hastily. ‘Of course I believe you!’

But he had returned to chopping wood. I was kept awake for some while by his thuds and groans.

Another time I resolved to press for exact details of his past. By then Mi Feng was proving useful in unexpected ways. He could clean the house thoroughly and even prepare simple meals, though he muttered it was ‘women’s work’. In addition to chopping firewood, he displayed an aptitude for hunting. The bow and arrows he made –without my permission, of course – were remarkably effective. Soon I was dining on all manner of roasted waterfowl, which he shot in flight.

‘Mi Feng,’ I said. ‘This really will not do. You are a mystery and I wish to know more about you.’

He paused in his work of plucking a duck, and sighed.

This exhalation of breath, remarkably expressive, was intended as a warning. I pressed on.

‘Mi Feng, how is it you are so proficient with weapons?

If you were an innocent slave, as you claim, surely the Kin would not have allowed you to bear arms. And another thing. Your body is covered with old scars. War wounds, unless I’m much mistaken. I know this because I observed them while nursing you back to health. And, might I add, while saving your life.’

He flinched. For the first time he seemed truly unnerved.

‘You did save my life,’ he conceded. ‘And you treat me honourably.’

‘Well then, clearly I am your benefactor. As such, I desire a little frankness.’

He licked his lips. Quite unwittingly, I had trapped him.

‘It might be that I’ve seen a little trouble,’ he said, reluctantly. ‘Never against the Emperor’s men though!’

‘Of course,’ I broke in. ‘For that would be treason.’

We fell back to our game of studying each other.

‘Mi Feng, it is said that tigers and deer do not walk together. I trust that I can sleep safe in my bed tonight? If not, you have my permission to leave at once. I won’t think the worst of you for it.’

A most surprising thing occurred. Tears filled his eyes.

‘So you think I am without honour!’ he cried.

He seemed genuinely distressed. It was as though I had called him the basest name in the world. I blushed. It is wrong to shame a man, even a dubious one.

‘I’m sure you’re very honourable,’ I said, hurriedly.

I left him to his plucking. Handfuls of feathers flew.

That night I half-expected to have my throat slit in revenge.

For a few more weeks we carried on in this unsatisfactory way. Then he asked me a question of his own. ‘Sir, how is it you earn your living?’

A civilised question at last! And one deserving a full answer. I told Mi Feng of my noble position in the Hall of Imperial Records and of my poetry. I even recited a dozen or so of the longer ones, so he could get a flavour of my style. He listened with ill-disguised scorn. Of course, I was wasting my breath. After all, one does not climb a tree to look for fish.

‘Is this Hall of Records,’ he said, thoughtfully.

‘Attached to the women’s quarters?’

That evening I related our conversation to my friends, who laughed uproariously.

By now I was almost certain he would not murder me.

It was high time we came to proper, regular terms, so I drew up a contract.

‘Mi Feng,’ I said. ‘I have paid a large price to free you, but you are a servant not a slave. If you wish to return to your family, I will not stop you.’

A sly comment on my part. It seemed unlikely any family would want him back. He hugged his old wound.

‘No, no. What place for me there? I’ll serve you, sir.’

Then I mentioned my titles, that I was a Lord’s son, and would pay a hundred
cash
a month, as well as food and lodging. I felt rather fine to deal in so open-handed a manner. Though I could not guess it, my open-handedness is the only reason I have a hand to write with now.

Mi Feng glowered at me when I offered him the contract, and tore it into many pieces.

‘You have saved my life,’ he said. ‘
That
is our contract.’

I nodded with every sign of sympathy. Secretly, I could hardly wait to share his latest outburst with P’ei Ti. Yet that night I slept soundly, knowing he was there to keep watch.

Mi Feng had many oddities. He insisted on rigging a curtained lean-to at the side of Goose Pavilion, like a kennel, claiming that buildings stifled him after his years on the steppe. I granted this, though it ruined the orientation of the rooms. His unorthodox lodging became a talking point among my friends, who visited me specially to view it. I was always happy to amuse them. Too happy, perhaps. Even then, some had begun to consider me an oddity in my own right.

When his breaths regained sufficient harmony, I sent Mi Feng paddling across the lake to Su Lin’s cottage.

Although by no means poor, I had only ordinary gifts to offer. Just the poems I had written on the night he woke from his stupor. A tiny jar of musk. A picture of a phoenix entwined round a peony, painted by myself. Of course, the phoenix represented the lover, and the peony she who was beloved.

He took my little rowing boat and I watched him ply its single oar. Fine silver droplets scattered like mercury across the lake. I held little hope Su Lin would reply. What would an ambitious girl want with a lowly Under Librarian? What was I, compared to such a one as Lord Xiao?

*

When Mi Feng, returned from his embassy to Su Lin, paddling slowly across the wide lake, I was waiting on the shore.

‘How did she reply?’ I demanded, as soon as he landed, rubbing his wound.

‘The lady gave me a cup of wine, sir,’ he said.

I ignored the hint.