The Mandate of Heaven (13 page)

* * *

The lands north of Chenglingji were utterly unknown to her. In the five years she had dwelt there, Yun Shu had never been allowed out of the Zhong family compound. If Xuanlu had not led her to the Northern Road and accompanied her several
li
until the lights of Chenglingji lay in the distance, she could not have escaped.

Eventually he halted, shivering though the night was heavy with midsummer heat. Far to the south, she saw a faint glow like a Buddhist hell: the Salt Pans.

‘I’ll go back,’ he said.

They stood awkwardly.

‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘And be free.’

For a moment he hesitated. Then the lure of safety and a known place in this harsh world, however low and painful, overcame his doubt. Flapping a hand in farewell, he shuffled back down the dark road. Yun Shu knew they would not meet again in this world, that her divorce had just been solemnised, that she was young, strong, and blessed with the freedom he had turned down.

Yet by the time Yun Shu reached the ramparts of Hou-ming, twenty days later, she was almost crawling. Her shoes were worn to rags and she had not eaten for days. She passed slowly through the old Pleasure District, crossing canals until the high walls and gatehouse of Prince Arslan’s palace reared. Guardsmen leant against their halberds, showing no interest as she approached.

‘Is Salt Minister Gui here?’ she gasped.

It was her chief anxiety. That he was still in the Salt Pans. The soldier did not disguise his contempt. ‘Away from here! No beggars!’

‘But sir,’ said Yun Shu, through a haze of hunger and fatigue, ‘please tell him, tell him his daughter … Tell him Yun Shu has returned!’

‘Get away!’

‘I am his daughter! I
am
!’

Something about her tone made the guards examine her closely.

‘She does look familiar,’ said one.

‘No harm to ask,’ offered another. ‘We might get punished otherwise.’

So saying, he vanished into the palace, returning with the news her message had been delivered. Yun Shu squatted across the road. The hour bell of the nearby Buddhist monastery chimed. Finally, a maid entered the gatehouse. Yun Shu felt a rush of joy. Pink Rose, older now, her face more careworn, but still her friend! Yun Shu had stepped forward eagerly until Pink Rose’s expression suggested a need for caution.

‘Where is my father?’ she asked.

The maid took her arm, weeping silently.

‘Why did you come?’ she sobbed. ‘A message reached Golden Lotus from your husband’s family. How could you, Yun Shu? Everyone knows your disgrace.’

Yun Shu blinked, exhausted and bewildered. ‘What disgrace?’ she mumbled.

‘Is not casting spells on your Mother-in-law a disgrace?’ asked Pink Rose. ‘You must go somewhere else. Your father won’t see you now. He is away down south in any case.’

This seemed so terrible Yun Shu could not accept it. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong!’

‘Golden Lotus sent me to say you are no longer the Salt Minister’s daughter,’ said Pink Rose. ‘Oh, Yun Shu, why could you never act like other girls?’

Dabbing her eyes, she hurried back into the palace, leaving Yun Shu swaying on the street. She had stumbled blindly away, not caring where she went.

Did fate bring her back to Monkey Hat Hill? Her only intention had been to reach the cliffs and throw herself off. Yet passing Deng Mansions, Yun Shu paused, wondering if Teng still lived there, whether he might help. She remembered his betrayal at the ruined watchtower and pressed onwards, reaching the Hundred Stairs. Step by step she climbed, each taller than the last. If she had not known oblivion lay at the top, perhaps she would have lain down and given up.

Only at the brassbound gates of Cloud Abode Monastery did Yun Shu allow herself rest. The gates were firmly closed: locking out the world and its cruel, illusory sufferings.

She sat for a long while, head bent over her knees, occasionally staring at the rooftops of the half-deserted city. As her strength returned she knew it was time to find the cliff – and have done with it.

There came a sound of bolts; the high doors of the monastery creaked open. A

lady stood framed by daylight, dressed in yellow and blue robes. Yun Shu shrank back. The lady seemed familiar, known in a lost life.

‘Lady Lu Si!’ she croaked in wonder.

The Nun of Serene Perfection looked down at her.

‘Why, it’s Teng’s little friend!’

Those simple, kindly words broke Yun Shu’s strength. Her head span and she fell back towards the oblivion she craved. Except a hand steadied her before she could topple down the Hundred Stairs.

The snow had stopped when Yun Shu woke. She lay beside the cold fire-pit in the shrine room of Sitting-and-Whistling Pavilion. A dawn of clear skies, night’s sorrows and laden clouds having blown far away.

Throwing aside her heavy blanket, she went to the door and looked out across Mirror Lake. A pale blue sky framed the Holy Mountain, Chang Shan. Though snow clung to the pines and bamboo round the lake, it was already melting.

In a fervour to begin her transformation to Perfection, Yun Shu hurried to the statue of Lord Lao and bowed deeply. Then she sat cross-legged, her heels pressed to guard her warmest place. She clapped her teeth thirty-six times and breathed through her nose gently. Though a novice in the Great Work, Yun Shu tried to visualise the Dao’s eternal energy rising through her spinal column. She raised her hands in the prescribed manner, all the time seeking to form a Pearl of Immortality from her inner force. But try as she might, the golden elixir remained elusive. She sat quite still, slumped in defeat. Someone worthless could never attain the Pearl. Let alone decapitate the Red Dragon.

And so the
ch’i
energy she had garnered through meditation, the life force that breathes and flows through all things, seeped away in grief.

Yun Shu feared she would never have cared about becoming an Immortal if her marriage had been different. If the Zhongs had welcomed her into their family with respect and kindness. If she had children, warm and demanding, to fill her days and heart. In short, if she possessed that precious elixir and magical transformation lost utterly, bitterly, since her mother died: love.

After the failure of her practice, Yun Shu could not settle. She noticed the flask of wine intended as a sacrifice for Lord Lao and shame-facedly poured what remained over his feet. Then she considered all the unhelpful food she had eaten recently. One rarely turned to a creature of pure spirit with a full belly!

But one of the Twelve Rules was
Avoid all melancholy, fear and anguish
. Yun Shu knew she must do something to elevate her mood, and resolved to thank the old woman who had provided her basket of supplies.

The path to Ou-Fang Village was easy to find as it shadowed the river, up past a sluggish waterfall and meadow where a herd of short-horned deer fled into the bushes, their speckled rumps rising and falling.

She came upon Ou-Fang Village quite suddenly and straight away distrusted the place. Perhaps it was the impression of squalor created by huts of damp mud, straw and thatch. In such a woody country it seemed strange no better building materials could be found. Maybe it was the sight of barefoot, hungry children, their faces streaked, their matted heads harbouring generations of lice. Considering a river ran through the village, there seemed no excuse not to wash.

The contrast between her clean, neat appearance and the surrounding dirt attracted immediate notice. Heads poked from windows as she picked a careful path up a street paved with liquid dung, lifting the hem of her skirts. A little way into the village she passed an old man loitering in his doorway. At the sight of her he fingered a lucky charm, as though she might be a hungry ghost in disguise.

‘Venerable sir! Where may I find the old woman Muxing?’

This question deepened his suspicion. He spat and gestured at a house opposite. Yun Shu felt his eyes upon her back as she crossed the lane.

Though small, Mother Muxing’s house displayed more pride than most in Ou-Fang Village. It possessed clean roof tiles and its own compound, complete with a crude gatehouse. A tiger’s fanged skull hung above the entrance. As Yun Shu reached up to touch it, the little girl from yesterday ran round the corner.

‘Hey!’ cried the girl. ‘It’s the new Aunty! Grandma, come and look at the new Aunty!’

For a moment no one stirred in the house. Then a large-breasted woman with blue tattoos on her cheeks and extravagantly piled hair emerged. Yun Shu recognised her as one of the Yulai tribe who originally occupied this land, long before the Han Chinese came.

Mother Muxing glanced up and down the street, displeased to find a Nun of Serene Perfection outside her gate. ‘Hssss! What are you doing here?’

Yun Shu frowned. ‘I came to thank you for sending food. And to make myself known.’

The Yulai woman sniffed.

‘You’ve done that all right – and not just to me.’

Yun Shu felt her superiority slipping. After all, was not Mother Muxing a servant of Cloud Abode Monastery? Should she not speak with more respect to an Initiate of the Dao? She remembered the little girl’s warning.

‘Perhaps you refer to Hornets’ Nest?’

A troubled smile crossed Muxing’s tattooed face.

‘Him and a few others. Best for pretty young girls not to parade around. I’ll accompany you home.’

She bustled back into her house, reappearing in a cloak and heavy wooden-soled shoes. Yun Shu noticed two young men in the house, eating their midday meal and watching with open interest through the doorway.

‘I must tell you,’ said Yun Shu, ‘my duties here include finding out what happened to my predecessor. Perhaps you can help me?’

Mother Muxing seemed not to hear the question.

Yun Shu followed the waddling woman through the village. Heads hastily withdrew from windows at the sight of Mother Muxing, who chuckled to herself, making a deep-throated, hoarse sound.

The ill-matched pair halted suddenly where the path re-entered the woods. A large heron blocked the way, regarding them with cold, hungry eyes. In its long beak, a beautiful, glinting trout wriggled. An upward tilt of the beak gulped the fish in one.

Mother Muxing muttered a charm against misfortune, using the dialect of the Yulai, while Yun Shu rubbed her own lucky amulet and prayed to Xi-wang-nu, Queen Mother of the West.

The heron stretched its wings lazily and flapped away.

Spring came and went. If a phoenix or dragon gliding through the pale blue skies of early summer had circled Mirror Lake, it would have noted several things. That the water below was a shiny eye fixed upon heaven; that it was surrounded by curious formations of limestone peaks, slopes, towers and gullies; lastly, that a young man of twenty-one perched on the highest of the promontories, an easel upon his knee and ink-slate, water and brush at his side.

That same curious dragon might have swooped lower and surveyed the young man’s work. For he was staring out at Changshan, the Holy Mountain, before executing swift, spontaneous brushstrokes. The composition was gathering force when a loud, taunting voice called up from a gully below.

‘Teng! We know you’re up there!’

The artist paused momentarily, struggling to retain the flow of his lines.

‘Teng!’ called a second voice, more insinuating than the first. ‘If you don’t come down we’ll drink your share of the wine tonight!’

The young man on the peak fought for clarity against fresh waves of jeering and a gleeful chant of
We can see you! We can see you!
Sighing, he cleaned his brush and carefully packed away the painting gear. When he rose, his dark silhouette could be seen for many
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around.

Teng had certainly grown since the day he watched the fleet sail from Hou-ming ten years earlier. He was neither tall nor short, feeble nor broad. His features, too, were midway between handsome and plain. Yet his sensitive brown eyes possessed an unusual intensity. Sometimes it was a cold, proud face, for he had inherited the Deng clan’s ancient pretensions.

His expression was particularly scornful as he clambered down to the two young men below, who whistled and pretended to bow. One was burly and the other lithe; both wore the scars of brawls.