The Mandate of Heaven (32 page)

At once the White Dragon began a succession of thunderclaps and lightning flashes so the very air tingled with energy. All to the benefit of Yun Shu! That lady opened her arms wide as she climbed the Holy Slope to the Sacred Peak, much as one embraces a friend or beloved rushing towards one, and scooped up vast effulgences of sheer
ch’i
energy each time the lightning flashed! The White Dragon merely added to her power even when seeking to abash the Serene One!

As she neared the Sacred Peak our foe deployed a fresh weapon. Rain lashed down from the sky like fierce whips. At once the earth ran with streams and trickles and many of the crowd lost their footing in the sticky mud, casting aside shoes and offerings. Sensing his advantage, the White Dragon renewed thunder and lightning, striking a huge rock near the Serene One so that the stone glowed and smelt of strange essences. Though entirely drenched, she did not falter. Two thirds of the crowd had fled back to the safety of the town and the remainder cowered on the slope, yet she climbed on top of this very rock that had been scorched by lightning. Raising her arms, she remonstrated with the White Dragon, defying his worst.

Master, that was a sight to see! A final thunder crack louder than I have ever heard echoed round the mountain, rain beating down and bouncing off the rocks, until, by perceptible degrees, it slackened. Black, frowning clouds began to clear. Still the Serene One maintained her station, praying and commanding the White Dragon to be gone. At last, that perfidious spirit withdrew and the sky was the pure empyrean of summer!

Our jubilation can be imagined. Those who had not fled back to Lingling carried the Serene One up to Precious Forest Temple in a state of joyous piety.

Later I received reports that longstanding ghosts had fled the district along with the White Dragon. Also, there have been no miscarriages in Lingling since the miracle occurred, though they were frequent before. So I commend this Nun of Serene Perfection to you, Worthy Master Jian.

Chief Priest Dongxuan, Sweet Dew Temple.

The following was added in a secret code known only to the recipient.

Though the White Dragon was defeated, not so the rebels. I urge you to be cautious, Master, for they have acquired a new leader far more dangerous than Hornets’ Nest. This Hsiung is said to be advised by a cunning master of strategy well known to the authorities (a certain Liu Shui).

As the clouds cleared, a bright sun came out over the hill country. The Holy Mountain’s slopes shimmered and sweated in the glare. Groups of dazed witnesses to Yun Shu’s miracle climbed to Precious Forest Temple, chanting hymns. Here and there, the pathway was littered with shoes and garments, rice boxes and water gourds, abandoned by those who fled the dragon’s lightning and fury.

Also littering the path was a young man in a scholar’s shabby blue robes, utterly sodden. He shook his cap so that droplets fell from its tattered earflaps and brushed wet hair from his forehead. Then he scratched itchy armpits. Glancing up the mountain, he watched hundreds of people carry a dwindling figure in purple robes onto the marble steps of Precious Forest Temple. Yun Shu, holding onto her hat with one hand as she was borne out of sight. Needless to say it was a far superior item of headgear to his own. The watching young man might have smiled, perhaps remembering how he had called her Aunty High Hat, except the joke tasted bitter.

Had Yun Shu really defeated a dragon? Little Yun Shu from Monkey Hat Hill? Certainly there had been black clouds and a violent wind, as if from a dragon’s beating wings; also a downpour fierce enough to resemble a magical attack. And what of the lightning, a favourite weapon of dragons? One could argue the mere fact that so many pilgrims believed a miraculous battle had been fought – and won – proved the matter beyond doubt.

Teng shielded his eyes and stared at the black clouds drifting west, away from Lingling. Distant flashes indicated more lightning, as though the dragon was venting its spleen. He also detected far away echoes of thunder. If the creature could still roar and hurl lightning perhaps it had not been vanquished at all. For a moment he contemplated the bizarre notion that, rather than a dragon, he was witnessing a severe thunderstorm – one that had been building up for days. Then prudence prevailed: such thoughts were dangerous; too novel to pursue to their conclusion.

Perhaps Yun Shu was right and his doubts flowed from a green gush of jealousy. Certainly he was struggling not to envy the former servant-boy, Hsiung, now hailed as a leader of men. Worse, a leader of rebels bearing the name of Yueh Fei, his own ancestor! So mystifying a reversal to the natural order was better ignored.

Teng dreaded to think how his father would react, how he would inevitably compare his son’s failure to a mere upstart’s success. That was bad enough. Now to find Yun Shu – a girl – applauded as half-Immortal, a heroine of the Dao! What did it say about Teng’s inability to satisfy the expectations of his ancestors?

How scornfully they must regard this wretch in threadbare clothes, alone without a single servant or underling, the last of a noble lineage.

He squeezed the sleeve of his robe so that a trickle fell to the ground. The itch in his sodden underwear and trousers intensified. He noticed a large, corked gourd-bottle beside the path, dropped in the stampede back to Lingling. Teng looked around for witnesses. No one. He approached the bottle and tested its weight. Liquid sloshed about. Glancing from side to side, he unstopped the cork and sniffed. Exactly as he had suspected!

Concealing this booty under his robe, Teng hurried along a path that led round the mountain to a small, long-abandoned shrine wreathed with small yellow flowers. As the sun beat down, he stripped off his trousers, stretching them out on a rock to dry. Wearing only his loincloth like a mad hermit, he sat gloomily, noting the shrine was a memorial to some Imperial official from long ago. Tombs, graves, bones everywhere he went! How wearisome it was to contemplate death. Yun Shu had been right to call him tainted. What she did not understand was how little choice he had in the matter.

Teng uncorked the gourd-bottle and drank. Belched defiantly. No doubt the green wine had been intended as an offering to Lord Lao. Stealing it could only deepen his bad luck, but so what? At least he’d confront
karma
in a blur.

The wine burned his throat, suffusing him with an inner heat that rapidly circulated through his veins. Likewise the sun warmed his skin. The wine went down in a series of gulps. It occurred to Teng he really should get drunk more often.

He remembered an obscure reference to
cinnabar buds
in the bamboo strips stolen from the dead prince’s tomb. Abruptly, as insight will often poke through the soil of the mind like stealthy shoots, he understood the cinnabar buds’ significance.

He stood up, clutching the gourd to his chest. Of course! Why had he not seen it before!

Teng paced before the shrine. With this understanding came a possibility of wealth and power almost as intoxicating as the raw country wine. At last he possessed something to sell in this sordid world! Something men would trade for heaps of jade and silk and gold! The collection of bamboo strips, lovingly buried with the dead prince’s other treasures, was no less than an ancient treatise how to gain Immortality.

Chuckling oddly – by now he was quite drunk – Teng stared across the peaks and green-clad valleys of the limestone country. Blue lakes winked up at Heaven. Clouds roamed. Teng longed to ride them all the way to Hou-ming, no longer a wretched failure in the world’s eyes and his own.

Not once did it occur to him, despite his father’s stern lectures on how to be a proper, virtuous gentleman, who might bear the cost of his discovery.

Six-hundred-
li
Lake, Central China.
Winter, 1320

Snow spilled from a drab, slate sky, driven in flurries by the icy wind. It was late afternoon, that hour when travellers hurry to find shelter before dark. Fortunately for the two merchants and their servants plodding through drifts of dry, packed snow, their destination lay only a few
li
distant.

They quickened their pace, urging the pack donkeys onwards with sharp blows, for the servants had learned their masters’ style.

‘Lingling Town!’ announced the first of these, a wiry, diminutive man of around thirty years, dressed in garish silks that had browned and curled at the edges like old chrysanthemum petals.

His companion laughed coarsely. ‘You mean the Noble Count’s
noble
capital.’

This traveller was tall and muscular, his own silks more suitable for a medium-class flower house than a blizzard. Although he spoke slowly, there was a gleam of cunning intelligence in his sideways glance.

Waves of snow clouds covered more than Lingling County. Across lands south of the Yangtze to the North China Plain, thick flakes fell and settled, frozen into place by remorseless blasts from the Mongolian wastes. In many districts of the Empire a famine was entering its second year, provoked partly by heartless weather, more urgently by the demands of landlords and tax-farmers, by unmanageable debts and by the sheaves of worthless paper bank notes printed in vast numbers by the Great Khan.

Even the Imperial Court was divided. Most Mongols sought to maintain the ancient ways of steppe and
yasa
, the all-conquering ways of Genghis Khan. Yet a growing number conceded that China, so wide and various, would never be ruled from the back of a shaggy steppe pony and sought to involve their Chinese subjects in official roles. So profound a division, ebbing back and forth across the royal dynasty’s collective mind, stifled the possibility of consistent rule.

Little wonder rebels threatened government forces and officials all over the Empire. Most were little better than bandits exploiting the uncertainty of the times. A few, however, clung to higher ideals – and among these, to a degree generally described as quite remarkable, if not eccentric, was the self-styled Noble Count of Lingling.

The travellers initially received a suspicious reception at Lingling Town’s city gates, but were waved through after the production of letters. They followed winding streets to what had been the Governor’s Dwelling, now known as the Count’s Palace. Here they were met in the courtyard by soldiers bearing pine torches that hissed when snow met flame. Darkness had come early and the travellers hurried indoors, rubbing their hands for warmth.

Deep in the palace lay a large chamber. In the centre stood a lacquered throne that had once graced a treasure room in a huge, limestone cavern. Yet the throne’s current owner, the Noble Count of Lingling, ignored his splendid seat; he perched on a stool before a brazier, staring into the glowing charcoal as though its heat and light could banish dark thoughts. For a long moment he did not notice the servant bowing at the door.

‘Sire!’ cried the messenger. ‘The visitors you asked about have arrived.’

The young man on the stool nodded curtly. He was in his late twenties and broad-chested as a young bull, his arms and legs thick-sinewed.

‘Sire,’ continued the servant, ‘should I inform Chancellor Liu Shui of their arrival?’

Again the Noble Count seemed inclined to nod. Then he shook his head.

‘Not yet. Tell the visitors I will see them in private tomorrow.’

Once the servant had gone, Hsiung resumed his examination of the brazier’s hot, pulsing heart.