Taming Poison Dragons (63 page)

‘Father, we must go with the children.’

‘Follow me! My chests. We must save my poems.’

The corridor is filling with smoke. Coughing, I lead him into my room. The chests are safe. A great crack of wood makes us flinch. The roof timbers are ablaze.

‘Throw them through the window!’ I shout.

He looks at me like a dolt.

‘What, Father?’

‘The chests! Throw them through the window.’

‘We must escape!’ he wails.

That much is evident. Paper and seasoned wood melt before the flames.

‘Help me lift this one!’ I cry.

‘Selfish old man! Our lives are worth more than your stupid poems!’

For a long second we gaze at each other, dumbstruck.

Then he obeys. Together we cast the first chest through the window. The most important, containing my best work. It rolls on the grass. The second follows – legal deeds and letters. Before we can lift the third, smoke overwhelms us. Nose, throat and eyes choke with fumes.

Firm hands take hold of me. I am carried a few steps and thrust into the air. I fall with a crump on the mossy bank outside the house. Eldest Son has called a halt to my madness. A moment later he follows, coughing and retching. Smoke is our enemy now. We must breathe. He hauls me away from Three-Step-House. I can hardly see for tears. Yet my verses are safe. My legacy is safe. I have endured.

I feel drops of rain on my face, slow at first, then gathering pace. The clouds which pursued us to Wei have broken. I stare up at the grey sky. Eldest Son is holding me upright, blinking in his sheepish way. Suddenly he recoils, thrown backwards by an invisible hand. I try to pull him upright, but his weight slips through my feeble hands. An arrow has emerged from his chest! For a moment he regards me with bright, unblinking eyes. Then he falls back and his head bangs dully against my chest of poems.

With a flutter, his eyes close. Rain forms silver beads on his cheeks. And all the vanity of my life dies with him.

A man rushes through smoke and rain towards us, his sword bared, slipping in the mud.

epilogue

‘. . . Green moss on the path seldom travelled
 to Mulberry Ridge. From up here

view a hundred
li
of flooded fields 
crowned by haze, circling white birds.

How many more times will this way choose me?
Once is all I beg, to say farewell.’

Hammering wakes me. For a moment I listen in surprise.

Then the burden of all that has occurred disgorges itself like a white flower’s seed in a strong wind. Better to close your eyes, retreat to the oblivion of sleep. Except one cannot help waking.

Thud. Thud. Thud.
One of the carpenters repairing Three-Step-House breaks into raucous, unseemly laughter.

I will have to speak to the foreman about that. Today my family’s face depends upon the good behaviour of us all, even the servants. Everything must be correct, replete with dignity, for it is a day of rites.

‘Did you sleep well?’

I am at Eldest Son’s bedside. He lies as he has for weeks, wearied by constant pain. I fear it will never recede, though he claims it lessens day by day. The effort of sitting up brings out a sweat, surely a good sign: heat is life’s proof.

‘You must eat a large breakfast,’ I suggest.

He stares at me glassily. His pale lips flutter.

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Offal of water buffalo fried in pepper and aniseed will lend you strength.’

‘There are no buffalo left alive in Wei,’ he says.

Answering back is a new thing, yet I am glad, for it shows spirit. We sit in glum silence. Outside the window the carpenters are bantering with my grandsons. Eldest Son’s eyes narrow slightly. He has always been strict when it comes to his children’s companions, perhaps because he remembers my own negligence with Youngest Son.

‘They will come to no harm watching builders at work,’

I say, softly. ‘Consider the bees, constructing intricate hives.’

We both know how often I have been wrong. I retreat inwardly and try not to think of my poor, lost boy.

Youngest Son’s body – and fate – were never discovered, though P’ei Ti ordered that the survivors of his company be closely questioned. Some said he fell from crossbow bolts, others that he perished standing over the wounded when the Imperial forces massacred all the rebel prisoners.

I cannot think of it. Sometimes I imagine his hungry ghost watching Three-Step-House and mourning all the years of life he has been denied. Surely he blames me. Perhaps I just blame myself.

‘Will you be strong enough to appear today?’ I ask Eldest Son.

He sips his cup of herbs and powdered rhinoceros horn, prepared by Daughter-in-law at ruinous expense.

‘I will try, Father.’

‘Ah,’ I say.

In the corridor I find Daughter-in-law admonishing a maidservant for dressing lewdly. Her own hair is piled higher than Mount Taishan and decked with silver, gold and jade ornaments. Her face is covered by a layer of white powder and rouge. Daughter-in-law’s stomach swells pleasingly, for in three months another grandchild will join our household. I hope it is a girl. I have had a bellyful of sons, without bearing a single one of them, except when it comes to worry.

The poor maidservant was one of those whose virtue endured an assault when General An-Shu’s forces attacked Three-Step-House, but from her tone one might think that Daughter-in-law blames the girl.

‘Daughter-in-law,’ I say. ‘You appear agitated.’

‘Not at all, Honoured Father!’ She produces a new silk fan and flutters it inexpertly. ‘I am. . . serene.’

A fine word! I wonder who taught it to her, and at once suspect P’ei Ti. He has taken quite a shine to Daughter-in-law, for reasons I cannot discern.

‘I have a question,’ I say, disturbed by the wheedling in my voice. ‘Is Eldest Son strong enough to attend today’s ceremonies?’

She purses her lips. ‘Strong enough, heh?’

Will that woman never leave off her
heh
’s? I brace myself.

‘Honoured Father, who could have expected these misfortunes! His Excellency P’ei Ti has told me you risked everything, even your own family, rather than betray the Son of Heaven. Let us thank Heaven it turned out well! I am sure the repairs to Three-Step-House will be completed before winter. And Eldest Son is stronger, too!’

She is the mistress of her weapons, so I leave the field without risking a further skirmish.

Many guests have travelled to Wei for our rites. Most are welcome. I glimpse several with their families in the square below, gathered around hired carriages, awaiting the hour decreed propitious by the astrologer for guests to enter Three-Step-House.

For decades our local gentry avoided me like an unpleasant odour, but since my deeds in Chunming, and especially since Second Chancellor P’ei Ti came to grace us, accompanied by a train of secretaries and guardsmen, all taint of official disapproval has blown far away.

Indeed, a story circulates that I passed secret messages to P’ei Ti while we were prisoners, urging him to ingratiate himself with General An-Shu in order to gain information concerning the rebels. By this account, I have become a wily fox directing a whole skulk of spies. In fact, I am a hero. The source of such a fanciful tale needs little guessing, yet the reward of thirty thousand
cash
from the Imperial treasury is welcome enough.

Daughter-in-law has sent down baskets of food and wine to refresh our guests in the village square, as well as fire-crackers imported to Wei at a shocking price. Sounds of mirth and carousing float through the valley. Well, let my neighbours be glad. Their noise might dispel misfortune.

I descend to the Middle House and find a pleasant scene.

Two young men wearing fashionable silks perch on the steps telling stories to my grandsons. They are our guests from the capital, specially summoned.

The taller of the pair is Cousin Hong’s third son and his companion is almost family too. My old servant, Mi Feng, now a prosperous man in his own right, has sent his first-born to honour us. I loiter behind a corner, and listen.

‘Is it true your father saved Grandfather’s life?’ pipes Little Sparrow, my youngest grandson. That boy is forever chirping.

‘Many times!’ declares Mi Feng’s son.

I remember him as a tiny baby, crying in the courtyard of Cousin Hong’s wineshop near the Pig Market. How he resembles his father! I might be young again, and Mi Feng before me. Who may explain the shuffling of moments between present and past? Yet we know what we have known, or some of it.

‘All our wealth grew from Lord Yun Cai’s gift of a humble inn,’ adds Cousin Hong’s third son. ‘He sold some valuable scrolls and gave the money to my father.’

So my generous actions are not quite forgotten.

‘Even so,’ continues Mi Feng’s heir. ‘Your grandfather owes much to our own fathers. They protected him many times when he provoked powerful enemies.’

‘Enemies!’ exclaims Little Sparrow, relishing the word.

‘Oh yes, through rash verses and the like.’

My smile falters.

‘Grandfather was
rash
?’ asks Little Sparrow in amazement. ‘What is
rash
?’

My nephew coughs a warning but Mi Feng’s heir, like his father before him, will not take a hint.

‘It means, he couldn’t keep out of trouble.’

‘Hush!’ protests my nephew. ‘Remember where we are!’

Mi Feng’s son laughs.

‘Thankfully, there were always friends to save him.’

I shrink back against the wall, my mind fluttering between anger and acknowledgement. I feel a hand on my arm: Old Wudi stands beside me. He looks incongruous in wedding clothes, a Fat-bellied Buddha wearing gaudy silks. Yet his expression is kindly.

‘Best to leave the young to their foolish talk,’ he says.

We retreat to my room and I summon a flask of warm wine. He waves a hand to indicate I should not fill his cup.

I lack such restraint.

‘Mi Feng’s son is right,’ I say. ‘I always relied on others to untangle my messes.’

Old Wudi is embarrassed by so much candour. I must remember our true relations.

‘All has ended well enough,’ he mutters.

Has he forgotten his own son’s death when I ordered the cleansing of the valley? Perhaps he believes his granddaughter’s marriage recompenses his family for their loss.

Certainly, it raises them to the level of gentry. Mine has been a notable condescension. Yet Wudi is a man to whom I owe much and respect more than he guesses. So I talk at length about his granddaughter’s beauty and virtue, and the risks he took on my behalf, as well as the honour brought to my family by her dowry, until he takes a cup of wine after all.

*

Several hours remain before the ceremony. I descend once more to the Lower House and discover Daughter-in-law supervising the final preparations for our feast. It is miraculous how many lucky sauces survived the burning of Three-Step-House, or so she assures me.

‘His Excellency P’ei Ti is unusually wise about sauces,’ she declares, smugly. ‘Who would have thought it in so thin a man! I asked him to test all those to be served at today’s banquet because I feared some may be unlucky.’

Such information is unwelcome. Should not I, rather than an Honoured Guest, determine such matters? It almost spoils the tea she places in my hands.

‘Did he approve of your sauces?’ I ask, at last.

She simpers, as though recollecting a great pleasure:

‘Yes, all of them!’

I’m left to drain my cup alone.

Later, as we stroll in the woods beside Three-Step-House, I cannot help raising the subject with P’ei Ti. It is an indication of our intimacy that I approach the question bluntly.

‘I am pleased you have not been incommoded by the female element of my household,’ I begin.

He nods.

‘Your Daughter-in-law is the gold in your treasure house!’

We climb a maple-clad hillside, paths carpeted by leaves, aromas cleansing as a soap of peas. P’ei Ti breathes in deeply, no doubt habituated to the stench of the city.

Our bamboo staves click on roots veining the muddy path.

‘A delectable woman,’ intones P’ei Ti, absent-mindedly.

‘Ah, Yun Cai, listen to the cooing of that rock dove! Truly we might be in the Blessed Isles!’

I listen dutifully.

‘You have lived among us for nearly a month now,’ I say. ‘You have eaten our simple food. Endured a hundred dull conversations. Put up with the tedious repairs to our house – and, indeed, I am grateful for the
cash
which pays for them. But old friend, do you really believe this uncouth place equates with the Blessed Isles?’

He smiles at my agitation.

‘Today is important for you, is it not?’ he says, smooth as the most practised courtier.

I splutter. Today I must face all those my actions put at risk. With hindsight, the finest motives may appear madness.

‘After these last few months, it could hardly be otherwise!’

He settles on an outcrop of rock, staring mournfully at the moss round our feet.

‘It is not you who should reproach himself,’ he says.

‘Yet I see you do. Forgive me for knowing you too well.

Despite all the years that separated us, you have not changed. The essence of the young man I remember stays true as a plum stone, which is to say impossible to swallow whole.’

Further up the valley monkeys are raising a commotion.

P’ei Ti, sharper-eyed than me, spots a circling eagle and we remark on its majesty and strength. He is all admiration, though I point out that even lesser creatures avoid its talons, as is proved by our monkeys. The eagle will be lucky to catch one now they are watching out for each other.

‘Yun Cai,’ he says. ‘This talk of eagles brings me to an offer I wish to make. Tell me, old friend, will you return with me to the capital? I could find a worthy position for you in the Son of Heaven’s service. For too long your talents have been wasted. Think of it! We could end our days as we began. An honoured place will always await you in my house.’

I listen in amazement.

‘This is something I never imagined,’ I say, at last.