The Mandate of Heaven (7 page)

A ragged vee of honking geese flew overhead toward the lake; both watched silently.

‘Officer Yun had a famous son, a brilliant son, a great poet. The author of that poem you found without my prompting: noble Yun Cai. When I was young we loved his poems. They described our deepest feelings – and fears.’

The boy’s thoughts raced ahead. ‘But Father, Yun Shu … Can she really be related to Yun Cai?’

‘Yes,’ said the scholar, ‘impossible as it seems. Though the poet died a hundred years ago, his descendents still exist. Debased, certainly. Diminished, of course. I have established your little friend, Yun Shu, is a direct descendent of the poet, through her dead mother.’

Deng Nan-shi settled back on the bench.

‘That is the first thing I wanted you to know,’ he said.

‘What does it mean?’ asked Teng.

‘Mean? Probably nothing. What does anything mean?’

Teng stirred. ‘Why did you bring me to this pavilion, Father?’

‘Ah, now that is not coincidental.’

It was for a story Teng knew well, pieced together from hints and indiscretions.

After Hou-ming’s defences crumbled twenty-eight years earlier, the Mongol army stormed through its ancient wards. All resistance melted into abject pleading, yet the victorious soldiers’ orders excluded the option of mercy. Prefect Deng’s futile defiance had cost the Mongol general, Prince Arslan, his brother’s life.

‘Did Prince Arslan really vow to add the last human, dog and cat in the city to his brother’s grave mound?’ asked Teng.

‘You have seen the size of the mound,’ said his father, ‘judge for yourself.’

Deng Nan-shi had been a sallow youth of eighteen, the youngest of five sons, disregarded because of his deformed back. Yet he had been married since the age of sixteen to a younger daughter of an impoverished scholar family.

‘Did you kill any Mongols, Father?’ Teng asked eagerly. ‘And my uncles, did they fight, too?’

The scholar shifted, glancing up at the ceiling of the pavilion. It was made of wooden boards sealing off the domed roof.

‘No, fighting was for the soldiers. We Dengs were for
policy
.’

His solemn emphasis on the word confused Teng.

‘Yet they were entering the city, Father! What other policy could there be than fighting?’

Deng Nan-shi struggled for breath, so that Teng stirred uneasily.

‘Where was I?’ asked the scholar.

The majority of the Deng clan had gathered in Deng Mansions, pretending not to hear the distant screams from the city below. Prefect Deng and his favourite sons had remained in the Prefect’s Residence, where they nobly hung themselves from the rafters using silken cords, to avoid the disgrace of capture.

None of the Dengs in their ancestral home could imagine their clan head’s fate. Up on Monkey Hat Hill a mood of unreality had taken hold. Relative greeted relative, paying graded respects and enquiring politely after each other’s health. Servants appeared with trays of exquisite wine from the storehouses, still earnest about their duties – for Prefect Deng was no friend to slackness. Soon a gay, almost festive atmosphere had flowed round the salons and courtyards. Aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, their servants and concubines, gulped the wine and chattered, or withdrew to corners, staring round fearfully.

The only one of Prefect Deng’s sons to remain at home was Deng Nan-shi. At first he pleaded with Mother to seek a hiding place, but she refused scornfully.

‘We can be sure that the Prefect will find a way of keeping us safe,’ she had said, as though her son was still a small, foolish boy.

Deng Nan-shi had stared at her incredulously. At that moment sounds of slaughter lower down Monkey Hat Hill became unmistakeable. A buzz of panic spread among the hundreds of Dengs and their followers. Individual voices merged into a collective moan.

‘Hide!’ screeched Deng Nan-shi. ‘I command you! I am clan head now, for surely Father and my brothers are dead. Hide!’

No one listened. He hurried to the gatehouse to look for signs of the enemy. There he encountered a single infantry officer with a handful of men. Deng Nan-shi stopped them at the gate. ‘Do not come in here,’ he warned the soldiers. ‘Hide in the woods and hope they do not find you.’

The officer was a little older than himself and had a bleeding gash on one cheek.

‘Sir! Prefect Deng sent me to protect you all!’

Again Deng Nan-shi held up his hand.

‘Save yourselves! It is too late.’

The officer pushed past him. The sight within the compound forced the soldier to halt. Some Dengs huddled and embraced each other, sobbing or wailing. A great crowd of concubines and other women, over two hundred strong, were being led towards the cliff by Prefect Deng’s First Wife.

‘No!’ shouted Deng Nan-shi, running forward. ‘Hide in the woods. Anywhere!’

The women were screaming, crying, chanting prayers for a favourable rebirth, holding hands or embracing a friend. He only had time to extract his wife before they reached the cliff edge and began to leap off the precipice like crazed birds without wings.

He stood in the now deserted courtyard and found the officer beside him. His men had fled.

‘Is there nowhere for you to hide, sir?’ demanded the soldier.

Then young Deng Nan-shi remembered a place. ‘This way!’ he cried.

As they hurried from the courtyard the first Mongols entered with bloody swords and axe blades. Deng Nan-shi, his wife and the officer rushed out to the artificial Holy Mount Chang at the rear of the compound then climbed up the mound – Prefect Deng’s pride and joy – into the moon-gazing pavilion.

‘There is a gap between the domed roof and those wooden boards,’ said Deng Nan-shi. ‘If we could somehow reach so high …’

The officer looked up doubtfully. Fresh screams reached them from the house. The Mongols had discovered those without the decency to jump to their deaths.

‘How?’ he began. His eye fell on a wooden bench. Seizing it, he held it up like a ramp, his arms high above his head.

‘Climb!’ cried the officer. ‘Quickly, before they see.’

Deng Nan-shi went first, scrambling up, shoved from behind by his wife. The officer roared at the strain of bearing their weight. Pushing aside the loose boards the scholar climbed into the moon-gazing pavilion’s dome: a small space, barely enough room for two. His wife nimbly followed, climbing in beside him. Yet when the hunchbacked scholar reached down for the officer, he found the bench back in its place and the soldier gone. At that very moment the first Mongols emerged from the house, dragging out women to violate on top of Prefect Deng’s prize orchid beds before casting them semi-naked over the cliff. As the air filled with despair, Deng Nan-shi had pulled the roof boards tight …

‘So that is how you survived,’ said the boy, dully. ‘By hiding.’

‘Yes.’

‘And after the massacre you and Mother climbed down from the pavilion.’

‘Yes.’

Teng realised he was tearful.

‘Did you … have to bury them all?’

‘One or two. Remember, Prince Arslan had decreed the people of Hou-ming were to form his brother’s grave mound. Most bodies were carted away in wagons dragged by prisoners who were themselves later added to the mound.’

‘How many died, Father? How many died that day?’

Deng Nan-shi laid a hand on his son’s arm.

‘When the next census was taken a few years later, only one in twenty of those who had lived in Hou-ming survived. And yet, as you know, the buildings were undamaged. Such were Prince Arslan’s commands. Looted and emptied of valuables, yes, but undamaged. A city of ghosts.’

Teng pictured twenty eggs laid out on the ground. Someone stamping until the ground was sticky with yoke and egg white and shell. Until a single egg remained.

‘There is more you want to tell me, Father,’ he said, ‘isn’t there?’

Deng Nan-shi nodded, rubbing his eyes. ‘Another day. Not today.’

The hunchbacked scholar left the pavilion, leaving his son to stare up at the roof boards of the wooden dome.

‘It’s about Hsiung, isn’t it?’ Teng cried after his retreating Father.

Deng Nan-shi did not answer.

A week later, Teng perched on the shell of a giant tortoise. The stone statue was ancient, Guardian of the Crossroads halfway up Monkey Hat Hill and a very stern tortoise indeed.

Over the last few days there had been a fury of packing in Yun Shu’s house: wagons pulled by donkeys or some of His Excellency Jebe Khoja’s immense herd of horses, accompanied by resentful soldiers tired of tramping up and down Monkey Hat Hill. Nearly all the Salt Minister’s possessions – and he had gathered an astonishing collection of valuables – had rolled through derelict districts of the city to Prince Arslan’s walled palace.

As Teng waited he noticed Hsiung coming towards him, kicking moodily at stones. He was tempted to ignore his faithless friend, but only for a moment.

‘Hsiung!’ he called, leaping onto the road. ‘I’m over here! Sit with me on the tortoise!’ The servant boy examined him so coldly Teng regretted his warmth. ‘That is,’ he added, haughtily, ‘if you like.’

It seemed Hsiung did like, though he chose not to acknowledge his master’s son. The two boys perched side by side on the stone shell, looking every possible way except at each other.

‘Do you think they’ll leave soon?’ asked Teng, when he could bear the silence no more.

‘Maybe.’

‘But you must know!’

‘Maybe.’

‘You’re hopeless.’

Mild and ineffectual as such a rebuke seemed it had a gratifying effect.

‘All right,’ said Hsiung, ‘I do know.’

Teng settled back on the tortoise’s neck, satisfied to have gained his point. It was one of autumn’s last kind days. Clouds of migrating birds blurred the horizons of the lake.

‘Why are they leaving the Hill?’ asked Teng. ‘Why leave a big mansion for a small house in Prince Arslan’s palace?’

Hsiung shrugged. Recently his voice had acquired a casual, soldierly drawl.

‘No choice. Too many officials killed by Red Turbans this summer. Bastard bandits!’ He paused to examine the effect of such hot language on the scholar’s son. ‘So the big bugs must live in a safe place.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Teng, scornfully. ‘Did Salt Minister Gui tell you?’

Hsiung spat proudly. ‘Sergeant P’ao tells me.’

The noise of wheels, hooves, feet, voices interrupted them.

‘Here they come!’ cried Teng, standing upright on the tortoise shell. Hsiung rose with him.

First a dozen soldiers led by Sergeant P’ao. At the sight of Hsiung some winked and waggled their eyebrows so that the boy flushed with importance. Then he wept silently to see his heroes march away. Next came the Salt Minister’s personal palanquin, its curtains drawn. Another followed, similarly shrouded – presumably belonging to Golden Lotus. A larger, open carriage gaudy with tassels carried Yun Shu’s two brothers and an aging tutor. More wagons of boxes and furniture followed, surrounded by a dozen porters with burdens so huge they resembled camels. Last of all, carts of servants.

Teng stared at the very final wagon. ‘Hsiung,’ he whispered, ‘do you see?’

Amidst a gaggle of maids perched their friend, Yun Shu, her clothes shabby, hair ill-tended. Teng realised it was over three months since he last saw her – and had so bitterly reproached the girl. All that anger was gone. Now he felt a need to acknowledge her. Perhaps that was why he stepped into the road, staring up into the crowded wagon.

‘Yun Shu!’ he called. As he could think of nothing else, he shouted: ‘Farewell! Do not forget us! Farewell!’

Teng caught a hot, resentful flicker from the corner of her eyes. Then she was past, trundling down the Hill, out of Monkey Hat Ward. He stood in the lane until the last carriage vanished through the ward gate.

‘Good riddance!’ he cried. ‘Good riddance!’

He whispered in case anyone heard: ‘Traitors!’

Stray yellow leaves fluttered down from a nearby tree. When Teng turned to speak with Hsiung he found himself alone. The image of proud, brave Yun Shu huddled among low females lingered. It was hard to forget who had betrayed her hiding place and so brought about her disgrace. All too easy to forget why.