The Mandate of Heaven (4 page)

Moving down the corridor, Hsiung located Teng in an abandoned bedchamber he called his ‘study’, diligently copying poems from an old woodcut book. Hsiung watched, deciding whether to mention Yun Shu. She would need something to eat soon, which was partly why he had risked sneaking into Hou-ming. Noticing him, Teng smiled. ‘Lady Lu Si has left her room,’ he said. ‘She told me to tell you that she is very grateful for the steamed buns you gave her. And the peonies.’

Hsiung decided not to mention he had stolen both gifts. The penalty for theft was a hundred strokes of the bamboo.

‘Don’t you get bored of writing?’ he asked, to change the subject. ‘They say the new Emperor can’t read or write yet he rules the world.’

‘He’s not a real Emperor. He’s a barbarian.’

Hsiung had no clever reply to such assurance. ‘Yet the Mongols rule everywhere,’ he said, doggedly, ‘far beyond the Middle Kingdom.’

‘One day they won’t,’ said Teng. ‘Father says their rule is … ‘ He struggled to remember the right words. ‘Inept and unjust. He says the Mandate of Heaven will be taken from them.’

Hsiung’s reply was a harsh braying laugh: ‘If the Mongols came here you’d hide behind your chair and wet your trousers! Waving brushes at them is no good. Me? I’d wave a sword!’

‘You’re always bragging,’ said Teng. ‘You’d hide like everyone else.’

‘No, I wouldn’t. I’m not afraid. Not of them or even Salt Minister Gui!’

‘Why do you mention him?’ said Teng. ‘He’s no Mongol, just their servant.’

‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’

Teng returned to the poem he was copying.

‘Well listen to this!’ said Hsiung. ‘I’ve hidden Yun Shu in the watchtower so they can’t crush her feet.
That’s
how afraid of him I am!’

Teng’s brush hovered above the paper.

‘Hidden her?’

‘You said we should be her
xia
, her heroes!’

Teng wiped the excess ink off his brush onto the mixing slate. Holding it delicately between finger and thumb, he swirled it in a small bowl of water that turned grey. Hsiung remembered the bucket he had filled with cloudy water that morning. His friend’s hands were shaking.

‘You’ve hidden her in
our
watchtower?’

‘I’ll show you,’ offered Hsiung.

He was prevented by the arrival of strangers.

‘Through here!’ called a gruff voice.

Teng rose and stepped behind his chair, dragging it towards the corner. But Hsiung maintained his stance near the doorway. A burly man appeared. He wore his robes loose in the heat, revealing a bare, hairless chest covered with tattoos. A sword hung from his belt and he carried a short two-pronged spear. Hsiung recognised him as one of the Salt Minister’s hired bodyguards. It was unwise for an official in the Salt Bureau to travel without protection. Salt provoked endless thirsts and grudges. He examined the boys impassively. Only Hsiung returned his gaze.

‘Something here!’ called out the man. He was joined by another mercenary with a halberd.

‘Take them to Master,’ ordered this second soldier.

Aware that running away would excite suspicion, Hsiung followed.

They found Deng Nan-shi still in his library. Except that now their neighbour, Salt Minister Gui, occupied the scholar’s high-backed chair while its owner knelt before him with a bowed head. Hsiung glanced swiftly at Teng, who had flushed with shame.

‘Your Honour can be sure we know nothing of your daughter’s disappearance,’ Deng Nan-shi was saying. ‘We live quietly here, in strict obedience to the Great Khan’s laws.’

Salt Minister Gui reached for an abacus hanging from his belt. He frowned and gripped it tightly.

‘Let us hope so,’ he said. He leaned forward and waved a pointing finger. ‘I have heard about you!’

The hunchbacked scholar smiled modestly.

‘I have heard,’ continued the Salt Minister, ‘all about your father. B-because of his pride and vanity this city is like a g-graveyard. Is it true?’

The kneeling scholar lifted his head and met the Salt Minister’s eye.

‘I fear you may be right,’ said Deng Nan-shi.

‘I’ve also heard,’ continued the Salt Minister, ‘one of your ancestors was no less than the illustrious General Yueh Fei. A name loved by rebels!’

‘He was indeed my revered ancestor,’ said Deng Nan-shi, quietly.

‘How strange! Look at his g-great household now! A spineless scholar, two scrawny b-boys and, oh yes, a madwoman.’

Lady Lu Si had begun keening and moaning in the next room, having curled herself into a tight ball that refused to open, however hard the Salt Minister’s men prodded her with halberd butts.

‘Your Excellency is well-informed,’ said the grey-haired scholar.

‘I am. I am. So, as I say, let us hope my daughter is
not
here.’

Deng Nan-shi sighed regretfully. ‘Your Honour has already searched …’

‘Just remember,’ interrupted Gui, ‘inform me. At once, I say!’

With that he rose. Deng Nan-shi remained on his knees. When the official had gone he met the boys’ frightened gaze and raised his eyebrows.

‘See if you can discover his daughter,’ he said. ‘It seems she’s disobedient in the matter of binding her feet. Because she shames him, he feels compelled to shame us.’ Deng Nan-shi chuckled scornfully then went off to comfort Lady Lu Si.

‘We’re done for now!’ moaned Teng. ‘You heard what Yun Shu’s father said. They’ll slave us and ship us across the lake to the Salt Pans.’

‘I thought we were her
xia
,’ replied Hsiung.

‘She has put us all in danger! Can’t you see? Everyone hates us Dengs!’

The panic and distress in Teng’s voice could not be ignored. ‘I don’t hate you,’ said Hsiung, ‘and neither does Yun Shu.’ He struggled to think of another, and then his face brightened. ‘Neither does Lady Lu Si! So that’s three people!’

They sat at the foot of the Hundred Stairs, afraid to venture further in case Gui extended his search to the bamboo groves.

‘I shall visit her at dusk with water and food,’ said Hsiung. ‘You can come, too.’

Teng’s eyes flickered. ‘Oh, I’ll come,’ he muttered, ‘I’ll come.’

The sun crawled from east to west. For reasons neither could explain the boys kept within each other’s sight. Teng even helped to prepare the family dinner of millet and steamed greens. As was his custom, Deng Nan-shi ate in solitude and contemplative silence. Lady Lu Si had recovered sufficiently to dine behind a painted screen, lest she make an indecorous noise with her chopsticks. All the while crickets chirruped excitedly and dusk drained the passing day.

The boys stole to their secret hole in the garden wall. Glancing back, Hsiung saw the faint glimmer of his master’s lamp in the library as he sifted through the family archives.

‘Have you filled the water gourd?’

Teng nodded.

‘Then let’s go.’

They crept up a steep path running parallel to the Hundred Stairs. It was gloomy in the bamboo groves at this hour. Even the monkeys had fallen silent. A deep, ancient calm lay across the Hill, but as they approached the watchtower both boys halted, straining to hear.

‘What is it?’ asked Teng.

Cries for help were drifting from the direction of the cliff. Hsiung surged forward, leaping through the twilight, slashing aside plants with his bamboo sword. Nearer the watchtower they heard the snarl and growl of a wild animal. Unmistakeable now, Yun Shu’s cries for help. She sounded desperate, as though she had been calling in vain for a long time. Birds circled, disturbed from their roosts. Further down the hill a troupe of apes began to shriek.

Hsiung sensed what was happening within the ruined walls – walls that no longer protected but trapped. There had been signs: scraped earth, fox scents, gnawed bones …

He hesitated, looked for Teng. The scholar’s son hung back fearfully. Easy to melt into the shadowy groves, join his friend and run back down the hill. Then Yun Shu screamed out Teng’s name and Hsiung’s own. The snarling animal answered furiously, yapping and growling.

The boy gripped his bamboo sword with both hands and dived into the crawl-way through the bushes. A moment later he was on the other side of the ruined wall. There could be no retreat.

The fading light confirmed his guess. A nest in the earth was occupied by yelping puppies; and standing over them, a frightened mother, a large red wild dog, leaping up at the ruined staircase where Yun Shu cowered, just beyond the reach of its snapping, yellow fangs.

For a long moment boy and dog surveyed one another. Hsiung saw the mother would never abandon her pups or allow Yun Shu to leave without a savage attack. They were trapped. Just as the people had been trapped in this stone square when the Mongols came.

‘Aiee!’ he bellowed, leaping at the wild dog, bamboo sword raised above his head.

Perhaps the creature did not expect so sudden an attack from so small a human. It shrank back. Bamboo smashed onto its skull. At once it rolled away, twisting to leap at the boy.

‘Hsiung!’ wailed Yun Shu from above.

He did not hear. The creature had fixed its jaws round his calf, worrying, biting. In fury he stabbed down with the end of the bamboo onto the top of its head. Again, again. Abruptly the slavering jaws, foaming pink with his blood, loosened. The wild dog’s head fell back. Hsiung wobbled and almost collapsed. Blood was trickling from his leg.

He lurched back onto a pile of masonry, still gripping the bamboo sword. Glancing round, he realised Teng and Yun Shu were on either side of him. As adrenalin left his body waves of pain followed. The girl wept hysterically, telling a story he could barely comprehend, ‘When I came here this morning I found the puppies! I tried to warn you but you’d gone. Then the mother returned from hunting. For a long time she wouldn’t enter. Then she grew desperate to feed her puppies. That’s how …’

Ignoring her, he turned in wonder to Teng. ‘I killed it!’ he whispered. A deep exultation opened in Hsiung’s soul like a clenched fist unflexing strong fingers. A hand discovering its force, power. ‘I killed it!’

Teng splashed Hsiung’s leg with water from the gourd. A bandage torn from Yun Shu’s spare clothes staunched the wound. Once the bleeding had slowed, Teng put an arm round his friend’s shoulders.

‘Yun Shu,’ he said, ‘see what trouble you have caused! Go home! And do not mention our names.’

The two boys watched her. She was kneeling by the dead mother and the mewling pups.

‘Did you not hear me?’ demanded Teng.

‘No,’ she whispered, tears still wet on her cheeks.

‘What do you mean,
no
?’

Hsiung had never seen Teng so angry. It made him want to laugh in a dizzy, exulted way.

‘All you think about is yourself!’ cried Teng. ‘Do you intend to live here forever? Where will your food come from?’

Yun Shu sat back on her heels, one hand resting on the dead dog’s warm body. ‘There must be a reason.’

Teng examined her in disgust. ‘You’re mad! Go back to your father. He scares me! Just make sure he leaves us in peace.’

‘There must be a reason, Teng,’ she repeated, tears welling again. ‘It is fate! It is the Dao!’

At that word of power they became aware the wind was rising. Bamboo groves swayed and muttered. Sighs like mournful ghosts swept the cliffs.

‘It is the Dao,’ she repeated. ‘Can’t you hear it?’

Teng stepped back, alarmed by the restless wind.

‘You are mad and selfish,’ he declared. ‘I found this place, not you! I forbid you to live here and I am no longer your
xia
.’ He turned to Hsiung. ‘Let’s get home before they catch us. We must hurry.’

In the shock of his injury and triumphant pride, Hsiung felt no desire to argue. Leaving Yun Shu bent over the wild dog’s corpse, they struggled into the thickening darkness. Hsiung’s blood-stained bamboo sword turned from weapon to crutch. He leaned on Teng’s shoulder for the slow, painful walk home. Half way down the Hill it was necessary to hide. A dozen men with burning torches were climbing the Hundred Stairs, prodding the undergrowth with spears, calling out Yun Shu’s name.

The pups whined and crawled around the dark interior of the tower as Yun Shu knelt beside the dead mother. Warmth left its body. All she could do was wait until morning.