Ma Wei Slope

PART TWO

The lady Lia, whom men called the Lady of the Tapestry, wife of Peng Yeh, stood at the great house gate of Peng’s farm at Ma Wei, watching the yellow road.

“There is a carriage,” she cried. “Let all be made ready! No—stop. It is not your master. A woman seems to be driving, and she is alone.”

Yang Kuei-fei reined in the horses and looked at Peng’s home.

She saw a high wall of baked brick surrounding the main buildings; from the slightly greater height of the roadway she could look over this wall and notice the houses and stores which backed against it round the central, empty space. Peng (or maybe his ancestors) had not been content to leave the impression of a self-contained farm, for at the far end of the enclosure there seemed to be an attempt at landscape gardening, with rocks, stunted trees, a bridge, a summerhouse. . . .

In the main wall, fronting the entrance, three gates stood shut.

Yang Kuei-fei pushed with her foot at the sleeping boy.

“Now is the time for you to perform your embassy,” she told him. “Do not let it be too obvious that I had to waken you.”

He yawned and rubbed his eyes.

“I wish,” he said, “that my father had not seen fit to present me with so generous a nature. Where is General Tung’s letter? Ah, I have it! A little crumpled, perhaps. Drive on.”

Kuei-fei shook the reins.

Peng Yeh’s wife sat awaiting them at the end of the long hall into which they were brought. The two tall servants halted and stood aside. One of them said, unnecessarily: “The Lady of the Tapestry will see you.”

She rose to her feet and bowed.

“In my husband’s absence I must do my poor best to make up for the hospitality which he would have wished to be shown,” she said. “You have come far?”

Ah Lai answered: “I have letters from your honourable husband and from General Tung, who is acting for the Emperor.” They all bowed at the Imperial name. Ah Lai went on: “I have to make arrangements, with your help, for the body of men which will presently arrive with the Emperor himself. You will see this in the letters. This lady is the Lady Yang Kuei-fei, whose name will not, I think, be strange to you even here.” He gave her the two letters, waiting while she read them.

She said: “You must forgive me, the two of you, for thus neglecting my duties as hostess. But it is only once in a lifetime that a woman at the same time receives orders from the Emperor and meets one so famous as the Lady Yang, so that you will, I am sure, understand.”

Yang Kuei-fei answered for them: “I have often had orders from the Emperor, but I have not always shown such haste to obey them. Nevertheless, I quite understand.”

Ah Lai asked: “May I speak to your stewards, to see about the Emperor’s men?”

She answered: “I have no stewards. Lo Chin, go with him and do what he says.” When Ah Lai and one of the servants had gone out, she went on: “You will honour me by coming to our part of the house? You must be tired after your journey. Men are expected to do such things without feeling tired, but with us it is different. Father Peng is sleeping now. You shall meet him later. My son is out on the farm, but my two daughters will make it their pleasure to see to your comfort.”

“It is good to know that you have your father living,” Kuei-fei answered, as she made to follow the Lady of the Tapestry. “The climate must be healthy. But your name . . . Was it given to you in youth, or have you gained it by prowess with the needle?”

She followed the other through passages towards the women’s quarters, marvelling as she went that the sturdy figure before her was the centre and hub of the house, that everything round her was controlled by that capable mind, and that she, an Emperor’s mistress, should feel for the first time awkward in the house of another. She finally put it down to a return to the sort of house in which she had been born, before they had taken her away to Chang-an. Values here were very different; the soil and its products loomed larger here than in the artificial atmosphere of the Palace. She felt a little homesick.

The women’s quarters, as they should be in a well-run house, were very separate from the remainder of the buildings. The Lady of the Tapestry led the way to the eastern wing, past servants pursuing their duties without obvious displeasure, into a room where two girls sat sewing.

“These are my daughters,” she said. “The eldest is not here any longer.”

The taller of the two girls had risen and bowed, followed by her sister. They stood waiting for their mother to speak.

Kuei-fei said: “It is all very different from what I have experienced for a long while. There are space—and time . . .”

The Lady of the Tapestry said: “They work as the seasons dictate. They tend their silk-worms, weave silk, dye it—perhaps embroider. I am myself fond of embroidery. You will have heard the name by which they all call me here. I do not object, for in the making of patterns I find delight. But I must not keep you here, looking at my insignificant daughters. If the eldest had been here, now. . . . I will show you your room.” She was wondering if her hasty messenger to her son, telling him to keep out of sight and remain in the village, had done his duty.

Kuei-fei found it utterly impossible, in this atmosphere of peace and productive work, to explain how she came to be on her way with the Emperor to exile in the western provinces. It seemed wrong, somehow, to obtrude considerations of politics and the necessities of palace life upon this scene. The quick fingers of the girls, the quiet, the slowly swinging reed curtain, the distant noise of house activity, filled her with almost a sense of shame, and she followed without speaking. The girls sat down again to their work.

Lo Chin, though tall, was spare. He babbled to Ah Lai as they walked.

“I have seen forty summers and five more,” he was saying, “and I have always served this family. It is a pity that my master was not here to welcome you.”

Ah Lai said, shortly: “I have met him, and look forward to meeting him again. That is all the family, counting the son, who is on the farm?”

Lo Chin replied: “There is, of course, Peng Lao, who sits and writes poems in his room, yonder where the little bamboo is planted. We call him Father Peng. At least, I hear that he writes poems, and sometimes one may see him at his door, saying words to the air, as if someone were listening to him. What is the good of saying words to the air?”

“I must pay him a visit now, if only for a moment,” Ah Lai said, for he had been well schooled, and knew the deference which is not always paid to the aged. “You must introduce me. My family name is Kuen and I am a nephew of the poet, Li Po.”

Lo Chin bowed as he walked, and Ah Lai wondered how he managed it. They came to the door by the little bamboo plant, and Lo Chin went in first, halting inside the door and performing a full kotow. Ah Lai could hear his voice as he spoke.

“This is the honourable Kuen Ah Lai, who has come to see you, sir. He is the nephew of the great poet Li, and begs the privilege of speaking with you.”

There was a great todo inside the door, and Lo Chin backed out, still bowing. Father Peng followed him, with great sleeve-flapping after title manner enjoined by Confucius, bowings and handshakings inside his sleeve, as he cried: “Alas, that I was not told of the arrival of the nephew of so famous a man as Li Tai Po!” He used the society name of the poet. “Had I but been aware of your footfall on the threshold, I should have come before, but this stupid fellow leads you to my door instead of giving me the opportunity of coming, myself, to greet you!”

He retired backwards through the door, still bowing, and Ah Lai had to follow the wizened figure, whiskered, white-bearded, the bright button of his cap bobbing at every step, as he vanished into the darker room.

Here, while he made the conventional difficulties about sitting down first, Ah Lai had leisure (since his politeness was almost automatic) to notice the single scroll on the wall, the cedar chest under it, the porcelain stools, the high k’ang bed at one end and the small table bearing writing materials, from which the old man had clearly risen only a moment before. On this table lay a sheet of rough paper on which three lines had been written in the style of the spider.

“I try to occupy my time so that no harm shall come to posterity from my activities,” the old man said, when they had finally seated themselves. “I saw you glancing at my unworthy effort of to-day.”

Ah Lai said: “Poetry can never harm posterity. If it could do so, it would not be poetry. My uncle also spoils paper.”

The old man replied: “Your uncle is famous in court and hovel. Wherever men have learned to rise above the level of the beasts, his poetry is known. To meet you is an honour which overwhelms my white hairs. Have you anything of his with you?”

“I regret that we parted yesterday in too much haste for me to ask him for a scrap of verse to elevate my mind while travelling,” the boy answered. “But I see that you are lacking one line of a ‘stop-short’, unless I am mistaken in your metre.” He indicated the three lines on the table.

“An unworthy outpouring of an old man’s complaints,” the other said. “Besides, I see no prospect of ever achieving the fourth line. If you would care . . .”

Ah Lai accepted the paper and read:

They sat for a minute, looking at the lines together. Then Ah Lai said: “I would make this in the first line into a, and (with your permission) conclude with a sombre thought.”

Old Peng agreed: “Yes, a would improve it. Poems should always be as indefinite as is consistent with clarity. You remember the Master’s If language is lucid, that is enough? But what of your sombre thought? Can you be more precise?”

The boy smiled. “It is not for me, who have so few years,” he said, “to suggest, to you, an accomplished poet. But, if you insist . . .”

“I insist,” Peng answered.

Ah Lai repeated the poem and added a line.

Father Peng rose to his feet and bowed.

“Sir,” he said, “I am in your debt. After this I shall never dispute that literary ability is inherited.”

Ah Lai laughed. “I am only my uncle’s nephew,” he answered. “And now I must leave you, for I have the Emperor’s horses to see to.

Indeed, as he was making his last ceremonial bow to Father Peng, he heard the confused noise of men and horses, and knew that the Emperor was within bowshot. Hastily he ordered Lo Chin to throw open the great central gate and unlock the store houses. Then he went to stand in the road and appear to be ready. He was conscious of a gnawing at the pit of his stomach, which told him, if he needed the telling, that he had not eaten for many hours. But this gnawing was soon only at the back of his mind, for he had never yet seen an Emperor’s Guard in all the splendour of their tossing plumes and red kneecaps, the slung bows and the high proud action of the horses, the bright glint of sun on steel (for it was the hour of the serpent, and again his stomach reported its presence to him) and the shouting round the single carriage in the midst of all these horsemen.

The Captain of the Guard and General Tung rode up together, dismounting at the gate. Peng’s wife had come up beside Ah Lai, and he could see that she was searching the figures before her for that of her husband. As Ah Lai watched her, Peng Yeh himself galloped round the flank of the horsemen and dismounted beside her. The horse on which Peng Yeh had ridden was sweating.

Peng Yeh cried in a loud voice: “Welcome to my poor house. All is the Emperor’s to command, as all land is the Emperor’s, and all men his.” He went on in a quieter voice: “My wife, get out of the way. This is no place for women. Busy yourself elsewhere.”

Ah Lai saw, too, that the Lady of the Tapestry did not resent these brusque words—if indeed she had heard them—but that her eyes were filled with relief that her husband had returned safely to her. Ah Lai marvelled again at the sense of values which women exhibited on the strangest occasions. He would soon be able to eat a meal.

Then the Emperor’s carriage drove up, without halting at the gate, and swung to a standstill in the main courtyard. Some of the guard rode in beside it. They all kotowed as the Emperor descended from his carriage.

He asked: “Where is Kuei-fei?”

There was a murmur amongst those of the guard nearest. General Tung and the Captain of the Guard looked at each other. Then Yang Kuei-fei came from the women’s quarters and kotowed too. The Emperor seemed to forget the others, and went to her at once. Han Im, coming from outside the gate, stood near.

This time Ah Lai heard quite clearly the remarks which the Captain of the Guard made to General Tung behind his hand.

“Lovebirds watched by a freemartin!” he whispered.

The day ended. The troops had been dispersed to barns, storehouses and other buildings in the nearby village. Only the Emperor and his suite, with General Tung, the Captain of the Guard and a small number of trusted men shared the security of the farm. The gates were shut and guarded: the last long light of the sinking sun fingered down the slope of Ma Wei and picked out the inequalities of the walls of mud bricks, the shadowed recesses by the gates, the red, tiled roofs of the buildings within.

In the Hall of Audience the Emperor, Han Im and Yang Kuei-fei sat over a meal.

“Peng is a patriot,” Han Im was saying. “I believe that he would have placed the Hall of Ancestors at our disposal if we had asked for it. You can picture him saying: ‘My ancestors served you while they lived: dead they can still serve you by providing a roof for your Majesty’.”

Kuei-fei added: “But he would not have welcomed me to his Hall of Ancestors. He looks at me as if I were not there. Do you think he can be wholly trusted?”

Han Im observed: “He can be trusted to serve the Emperor and therefore to serve you, not directly, perhaps, but to serve you nevertheless. His servants can cook well.” He eyed a plover’s egg on his chopsticks, then put it into his mouth. “Very well,” he ended.

The Emperor seemed pensive. “I am tired,” he said, “but not too tired to wonder what General Tung will decide to do. He, also, does not like to have women about.”

“I am sure that there is still danger,” Kuei-fei said. “Sometimes I think it would have been better to have stayed at Chang-an.”

“If you had done that, I should have stayed also,” the Emperor told her. “They dislike you, Kuei-fei, because they attribute to you such military defeats as we have lately had. To you and to you, Han Im.”

Han Im replied: “They may so attribute defeats, but their thinking (if thinking it be) is the thinking of a man who sees geese flying into the setting sun and believes that the sun is flying from the geese. There are other eunuchs who have dabbled in politics, but not I. To me, politics are a distasteful form of activity, for I have no desire to rule others.”

“Tung says we shall go to Szechuan,” the Emperor said. “I wonder how long he thinks it will be necessary. This rebel, An Lu-shan, will he gain or lose adherents? A Hun . . . my people will not willingly follow him.”

Han Im ceremoniously held out to the Emperor the dish containing plovers’ eggs.

“These,” he observed, “are good enough to prise our minds from our difficulties.”

In the Women’s Rooms, the Lady of the Tapestry picked up her rice bowl, spooned it half full of rice, added two pieces of fried bean-curd and a bunch of bean-sprouts, dipped her chopsticks in the sauce-boat, and then paused pensively.

“I was keeping those plovers’ eggs for your father,” she said.

Her younger daughter, Pen Mooi Tsai, stopped eating. “You did not put them all out,” she said. “Besides, we can get more. I think that the Captain of the Guard is very handsome.”

Her mother replied: “Possibly. But you have only seen twelve summers, and you are affianced to a boy in Lo-yang, so you must not think of such things. I wonder where your elder sister is.”

“Still at Chang-an, I suppose,” the girl answered.

The Lady of the Tapestry frowned. “How many times,” she asked, “must I remind you that you have but one other sister, your sister Mei? It is true that there was another, but, as you say, she went to Chang-an, and she is no longer your sister, really. Besides, I said ‘elder’, not ‘eldest’, so you should not have made the mistake. Where can she be?”

Mooi-tsai replied: “The Emperor must be a great strong man to want such a number of girls. I wish you had let me see him, instead of keeping me in here. I think I hear my sister Mei outside the door. She seems to have someone with her.”

Peng Mei, a little taller than her younger sister, came in and said: “There is a girl here who came with the Emperor’s men. She had nowhere to feed, so I brought her in. She does not speak.”

Mooi-tsai went on eating, but she turned her head to see who it was.

The Lady of the Tapestry looked at the girl as she stood within the doorway. Then the Lady of the Tapestry rose to her feet. Her voice was calm.

“Come with me to my room,” she said. “Mooi-tsai, when you have finished your bowl, bring mine and another for our visitor. Do not forget the chopsticks, nor the sauce. Mei, start your meal.” She led the way to the adjoining room. When they had gone in she put her arm round Winter Cherry’s shoulders and said: “Do not tell me, if you do not want to. Now, now, crying will do you no good. Still, my jacket is an old one. Put your head here. You must finish before Mooi-tsai reaches the bottom of her bowl. There, there!”

She patted Winter Cherry’s shoulder again, and Winter Cherry’s sobs became less noisy.

After a little, they stopped.

Father Peng, General Tung, the Captain of the Guard, Peng Yeh and Ah Lai sat eating with the disquiet of men who know that knowledge is not shared between them.

Father Peng held out his rice-bowl and observed: “Mencius said that the good man is not mean to his parents. My rice-bowl is empty.”

Peng Yeh apologised and filled it. “A man’s duty,” he said, “is first to his family, then to his Emperor. If I have extended too much care to the second, I beg the first, in your person, my father, to forgive me.”

General Tung and the Captain conversed in low tones. Ah Lai could catch only snatches of their talk, so he edged imperceptibly nearer to listen.

“What was I to do with the impertinent fellow?” the Captain was asking. “If the Kingdom is, indeed, governed by eunuchs and the women of the palace, what is that to him? He gets his pay.”

Tung observed: “Punishment for such indiscipline would seem essential, if the remainder are to be loyal. For if one question the ultimate authority, the others cannot, seeing him unpunished, be relied on. I know that you are short of men—that every soldier is precious. But soldiers are of no use unless they obey unquestioningly. This man should die, as an example to the others. I see no other way. Better to have ten trustworthy men than ten thousand forever wondering if you have given the wise order.”

The Captain said: “To-morrow.”

General Tung replied: “No. To-day. But come—let us ask the opinion of one who has seen many more moons than we, whose judgment will thereby be the sounder. You agree to abide by his decision?” As the Captain nodded, General Tung went on, addressing Father Peng: “Sir, I beg to submit a question for your decision. Will you favour us?”

Father Peng said: “I must know all the circumstances. To see a stone in a brook is not to know the brook: to know the brook only, is to be ignorant of the ocean. What is your problem?” He sat up straight on his stool. “When I was sub-prefect at Hwa Lu, I had often to solve problems.”

General Tung said: “I should have guessed that you had exercised government, but I confess that our present troubles had put reasonable thought from my head. So a man who is ill forgets his manners. The State is ill. Our problem is this. One of the guard said to his captain that since the Empire is governed by eunuchs and the women of the palace, he did not see why he should sacrifice his life to save these irresponsible rulers.”

Father Peng pondered. Then he said: “You have not told me all. Such an attitude on the part of a common soldier implies either madness or a long period of misgovernment on the part of his superiors. As to the charge which the man made, that does not concern him. It concerns his superiors. But it would be best to have the man here, in order to question him.”

The Captain went to the door, opened it and called. Then he came back and sat down.

Father Peng said: “I have been remembering the advice which the philosopher Mencius gave, when King Seuen came to him with a similar question. Something like this: ‘When your intimates say that a man deserves to die, shut your ears. When your high officials say it, shut your ears. But if the common people say it, see the man, judge his case, and (if he merits it) execute him. This is the origin of the saying that a man should only be killed by the people.’ You see? Ah, this is the man?”

One of the guards entered, with two more behind him. He was unarmed. He bowed to Father Peng.

“To an old man, courtesy,” he said.

The Captain ordered: “Repeat what you said this morning.”

The man began: “My name is Seuen. . . .”

Father Peng whispered: “A coincidence!”

The man continued: “. . . and I have been in the Guard for ten years. When I first served, all was well in the State. Peace at home vied with the reputation for military skill over the borders.”

“He talks well,” Father Peng said. “Go on.”

“At this time,” Seuen went on, “the Emperor”—they rose and bowed—“held his court at dawn. Then Yang Kuei-fei came, and there was no more dawn court. The schools and libraries which the Emperor had ordained languished because he took no further interest in them. It was then that the men of the Guard began to talk politics. Everyone talked politics. The eunuchs gained power. You could get anything by paying money. And now, Chang-an is in the hands of the rebels and we guard this woman as she takes the Emperor away to safety. It is not a man’s empire that we have now. That is why, this morning, I questioned an order. That is all which I have to say.”

Father Peng said: “We are told by the Master not to underrate a man because of his words nor to hold what he says in small esteem because it is he who says it. Nevertheless I think that it must be pointed out that in thus voicing your opinions on politics you are stepping outside your trade. In spite of the modern carelessness of thought it yet remains true that every building starts from the ground, and therefore I would contend that before you are qualified to speak of the influence, Imperial or otherwise, of Court ladies and of eunuchs, you must prove your ability by demonstrating the soundness of your acquaintance with the art peculiar to the soldier, I refer, of course, to tactics.” He raised an eyebrow in the direction of General Tung and the Captain, and was rewarded by gestures of assent.

“There is no fault to be found with your contention,” the General agreed, “in so far as I am qualified to judge.”

The Captain said: “Yes.”

Seuen complained: “It was ever so. A man of the people, like myself, dares to take the liberty of thinking, only to find himself enmeshed in a net of words which render him helpless as a trapped duck. What you have said, sir, is made of beautiful sounds, of echoes from the past, and of quotations from great men. In this net I am not able to move. But if you feel it necessary to award to me the punishment of listening to these words, I am very grateful.”

Father Peng said: “If that is so, do not talk but listen.” Linking actions with his words, he continued: “These chopsticks which I lay here represent a ridge. This sauce-holder at the northern end of the ridge, represents an enemy city. The magistrate of this city has put his troops, these melon-seeds, astride the ridge south of the city. Here. Your commander has twice as many melon-seeds, archers, cavalry and footmen, who have just reached the southern end of this ridge, thus. What would you expect your commander to do?”

Seuen replied, hesitantly: “I cannot decide.”

Father Peng enquired softly: “And why?”

Seuen was silent.

The Captain observed: “I should not expect my men to be able to answer such a question.”

General Tung asked Seuen: “Can you answer this question?”

Seuen replied: “I can give an answer to the question, but I have no means of knowing whether my answer would be judged correct.”

Father Peng observed, apparently addressing himself to a silk scroll on the wall above Seuen’s head, and very much to the latter’s embarrassment: “When I had command of men I first read such books of military history as my circumstances permitted. I then sought information and advice from such of my friends as had studied the art. When I had gained this objective, I took with me a small number of men and moved them about the country, imagining always that their passage was prevented or imperilled by the wisdom of an enemy commander superior to me in all but fortune. Only then did I dare to engage my men in real combat. The Master has said that to lead an untrained force into action is equivalent to throwing them away. The word ‘untrained’ applies reasonably to commander as to soldier. The duty of the commander is to command, while that of the soldier is . . .” He stopped, then said suddenly: “What is a soldier’s duty?”

Seuen replied immediately, without thinking: “To obey the orders of his commander.”

Father Peng said softly: “Yet you queried an order.” He laid his hands upon the table, palms upwards.

General Tung said to the Captain: “Tell him to go and wait.”

The Captain of the Guard gave the necessary orders to the two men who were by the door. When Seuen had been taken away General Tung said: “I am not familiar with this situation. It has not occurred in any of the military histories which I have read. Would you do me the incomparable favour of resolving it for me?”

Father Peng began: “It is contained in the records of an obscure campaign of five hundred years past, during the Han Dynasty, in the neighbourhood of the city of Heng Tsin, not far from here. The defending troops were under the command of the magistrate of the city, while a certain rebel general, known as Tiger Lu, rode at the head of the southern forces. It is an old problem. One is compelled to decide whether to attack on the right, centre, or the left. There is only one answer—the centre. I need not trouble you with the reasons for this decision, other than to point out that the man on the lower level is always at a military disadvantage, and therefore the ridge had to be occupied, and that, once astride the ridge and on a level with the defending forces, it is useless and indeed foolish to waste both time and energy in descending from the ridge with any part of one’s forces. If I remind you that he who rides on a tiger cannot dismount, straining the metaphor perhaps, you will understand why. Alas! I have now altered the problem completely, since it would appear that I have eaten two-thirds of this excellent southern force, that the armies are now equal, and that in the absence of the man Seuen (who must certainly be executed tomorrow since he exhibits the most dangerous of all characteristics in a soldier—the ability to think for himself) I find that the motive power behind my thoughts, the incentive to military analysis, has vanished as completely as those unfortunate men whose bones lie scattered here upon the table. Besides, I have hardly heard anything lately from your own lips.”

General Tung and the Captain of the Guard rose to their feet, bowed very low to Father Peng, and went out to their temporary quarters.

Peng Yeh and Ah Lai, each feeling that too much had been said for comment to be tolerable, went out also, bowing as they passed.

Father Peng sat on in the still, unwavering light of the lamps, fighting over a half-remembered campaign, and decimating the opposing melon-seeds quite impartially.

It was late in the first watch—the hour of the dog. Ah Lai, as he came out of the bright lamplight, found that he could see nothing at all of the buildings round him save the glimmers of light at the oiled windows of living rooms, the clear-cut, corrugated outline of roof-ridges against the almost imperceptible violet of the sky, the veiled suggestion of stars which some high haze made seem mysterious and, away towards the village, the gentle glow of two camp-fires fitfully smudging the northern sky. Before him a blacker gap opened in the black rectangle of sheds and storerooms which served as a boundary to the little formal garden beyond, and through this blacker gap he walked, his feet uncertainly feeling their unaccustomed way, towards the little summerhouse which he had seen in daylight beside the miniature and useless bridge. He went to the summerhouse, felt distrustfully for the plank seating which should run round its enclosed sides, and seated himself, prepared to indulge in what his mind would have considered a pleasant quarter of an hour’s analysis of his own position.

It was, he assured himself, a pivotal date. Hitherto he had but been at the whim and wish of his uncle’s fancy: now, if the hints of General Tung meant anything, responsibility would enter. His mind, effortless in the friendly dark, slid easily over a boyish past, through adolescent experiences which his uncle had curiously encouraged, over hunting expeditions and literary evenings and through the narrow, welcoming, scented doorways of blue houses. And had all this, he mused, in any way fitted him for this sudden growing-up, with its unwanted accretions of responsibility, its right to direct the lives of other men who (his innate commonsense assured him) were probably far better qualified to direct their own? He reflected on the cause of this change, on the sudden realisation with which he had first seen Winter Cherry at the Porcelain Pavilion, and on his irrational but quite instinctive and immediate decision that she, without either knowing or intending it, had disrupted the easy flow of events and (since a poet’s nephew might be permitted a metaphor) had scattered the stars of surprise, or, alternatively, had set them swaying drunkenly upon the not-long-ago smooth, dim, surface of his life’s stream. Ah well, what had to be, had to be, and Winter Cherry seemed to have served her purpose only in compressing into a narrower space of months—or was it days?—his undoubted transformation.

Then he realised, even as his eyes became more accustomed to the dark, that someone was breathing within a foot of him and heard Winter Cherry say: “I am sorry that you did not know I was here, but I could not get out.”

After a few thumps his heart resumed its normal beat, and he said: “I did not know that you were there, but it is possible that the curious spirits of the land may have brought our thoughts together, for indeed I was thinking of you and of how you had changed me.”

“This is my home,” she said, “but, even so, I do not think that you and I should be sitting together thus in the dark. I had been thinking, also. Do you know that only my mother recognised me when I came?”

He laughed softly, surprised at the pleasant suggestion of his own laughter. “I thought that you, now that your troubles and your honours alike are over, would not too clearly remember what brought us together. In my experience of women I have always found them ready to forget any inconvenient service which has been paid them, such as the service which my uncle and the eunuch Han Im paid you when they helped you to run away from the palace at Chang-an. If you have been thinking, as you say, I judge your thoughts to have dwelt upon a welcome return to the routine of a woman’s duties, a routine which in spite of its lack of excitement provides for you the alternative to the soft delights of palace life.”

“That was not my thought,” she answered softly. “I was thinking that you, now, . . . Hush!”

Voices were coming towards them. Ah Lai could see nothing of the speakers, and Winter Cherry sat motionless beside him.

One voice said: “Then we shall tell them to-morrow. Such a woman as she is cannot be allowed to live. We must trample her under the horses out there, on the slope of Ma Wei.”

The other voice replied: “What you suggest is very dangerous, but if the opportunity is not seized now, the opportunity will pass. The case of the punishment designed for the fool Seuen is as good a one as is likely to arise. And, if she is killed as well as that fat eunuch Han Im, then we shall at last have a government of men.”

The first voice went on: “Perhaps it will be enough if we kill only the woman. Eunuchs, unlike girls, can be made to see sense. Yes, we must do it now. The Captain of the Guard and General Tung can recognise truth when their noses are rubbed on it, and it is the duty of every loyal man to do for the Emperor what he has been prevented from doing for himself by reason of being woman-ridden.”

The speakers moved off and their voices joined with the gentle movement of the wind.

Ah Lai said: “‘Woman-ridden’. That is the talk of madmen.”

Winter Cherry did not speak, but he was surprised to find that she so far forgot the rules of behaviour as to touch his sleeve gently. From the living rooms a voice sang, just audibly, a song of the Han campaigns.

Ah Lai said: “Life is a campaign, and to him a joyous one. I do not feel to-night that I could ever say to you again the things which I said to you at the Pavilion of Porcelain, but I do not regret having said them. I meant them then, and I am not of those weak ones who veer and back like a lake wind in autumn. Nevertheless I am very tired, and I am going to bed now. I am so tired that for once I am quite content to leave to the military officers the problems which it seems will confront them. You, too, must be tired. Let us bid each other good-night, for if we fell asleep where we are now it might lead to pleasant but awkward misunderstandings. Walk well. If I have seemed to say nothing which was expected of me, you may ascribe that merely to fatigue. Had it been otherwise, I would have spoken otherwise.” He rested his hand for a moment on her shoulder, felt her shiver at his touch in the warm night, took away his hand and rose to his feet. “I was not at my best to-night,” he said as he left her.

Winter Cherry did not for some minutes rise from her seat in the summerhouse, but when she did she was still conscious of his touch upon her shoulder, as a delightfully remembered thing which unbalanced the rhythm of her heart and made it difficult for her to set her mind firmly on what she knew that she had to do on the morrow. Then she went back to her own room.

When Yang Kuei-fei came to the room of Winter Cherry, the girl was sitting on the bed at the end of the room, lost in thought. She started up when Kuei-fei came in, as habit dictates to a minor star when the moon sweeps into the sky.

“You are thinking,” Kuei-fei said, sitting down on the bed and motioning Winter Cherry beside her. “Do not be shy, girl—you and I are in no very dissimilar circumstances. Disaster sniffs at our heels, like a mongrel bitch.”

Winter Cherry replied, sitting down: “Yes. Even when I am awake I seem to be sleeping. I have been so ever since . . .”

Kuei-fei said: “He sent for you, that last night. I was angry with that, for though I did not want him myself, I grudged him to you. Yen told me of it.”

“I had to go,” Winter Cherry told her. “Han Im fetched me. His Majesty talked a great deal.”

“Some men,” Kuei-fei answered, “have need of women to hear what they have to say. Such is our Emperor. I know that it seems disheartening to serve merely as a waste-box for words, but you must remember that I have known him for long, and that in years one gains an insight into failings and virtues which is, by the ignorant, called love.”

Winter Cherry did not reply at once. Then she said, slowly: “I do not wish to think that any man whom I loved could become just a literary habit. But I suppose that, when you come to know them better, men seem very ordinary. That is a thought which I should prefer to put behind me.”

They sat without speaking for a while. Then Kuei-fei observed: “We women who have known a man for a long time are apt to seem not so much patronising as unimaginative, to you who are in the first flight of emotion. It is, I assure you, only a protecting screen to our real feelings. If we regret the passing of romance and take refuge in superficial cynicism, we do so only to conceal (even from ourselves) that our hearts are being slowly but surely ground to powder by the disillusionment born of experience, by the dull colours in which habit can paint what was once inspiration.”

Winter Cherry replied: “I do not think with so many words. I do not strive to spear my meaning on a hair-pin. And I think that I, who shared the honour of the Emperor’s couch not so long ago, should be spared this talk of love, which I begin to suspect is not a frequent visitor to that couch.”

Kuei-fei said, seriously: “What matters is what a girl means by the word ‘Love’. Love, to me, means each of those unforgettable moments when personalities are centred to a fine, glowing point, and these two points play, like amorous fire-flies, in the dark which is the rest of life. At such moments words are spoken which even the speaker hardly hears, but words which are kept unstained and undistorted through a hundred of later-lived moments. Thus I remember our pledging each other . . . Why am I saying this to you?”

Winter Cherry did not speak.

Kuei-fei went on: “On the night of the double seven, in the Palace darkness, we were to be two, mating, one-winged swallows—two limbs of a single tree. That is the sort of pledge which we women remember.”

“No man has ever said that to me,” Winter Cherry said. “But I think that one man once meant it. You will not think me wrong if I tell you? We are both in my father’s house, and I do not feel here as I felt at Chang-an.”

“Go on,” Kuei-fei told her.

Winter Cherry continued: “When His Majesty slept, I ran away to the Porcelain Pavilion, because the poet, Li Po had been kind to me earlier. Han Im followed me, as he said was his duty. But those two could not, between them, have prevented the wall of sorrow which swept over me. I should have killed myself. There was a boy, the nephew of Li Po, and he said things to me which made me forget my sorrow and what I felt should have been my shame. I cannot remember exactly what he said, but I did not want to kill myself any longer.”

Yang Kuei-fei did not urge Winter Cherry to say more. She sat still, on Winter Cherry’s bed, thinking of Ah Lai and of how easy it had been for her to bend him. And, accustomed even as she was to conquest on easy terms, she felt a little sorry to have streaked the bright surface of young love by a momentary and tawdry delight in capture. She knew that this regret was quite unlike her, and that it would probably pass almost at once. And yet she felt something of the sensation of one who has lightly laughed during the Great Sacrifice. She could not clear her mind of this common dross of compunction. What could she set up against Winter Cherry’s simpler yet sublimer love? You smash a vase, and the potter’s graceful thought lies before you in a thousand pieces. You stir the mirror of a pool, and though the ripples subside, the mirror is never quite the same again, afterwards. Was her life really so important, even to herself? Even to the Emperor? And why consider the Emperor now, when all her life had been spent in considering herself?

She brushed at a speck of dust on the back of her hand and got up.

“It must be comforting to love like that,” she said as she went out, leaving Winter Cherry still sitting on the bed, thinking of Ah Lai and the Pavilion of Porcelain.

Han Im, on his mat in front of the door of the room in which the Emperor was sleeping, woke at a touch and realised that he must have been dozing. Father Peng was at his side, making motions with his finger to enjoin silence.

Father Peng said: “Take this sword. It was mine.” He put into Han Im’s hand a beautiful ivory-hiked weapon, sheathed. “Men have been talking outside my window. They are going to take the Emperor’s favourite on to the slope of Ma Wei hill and trample her under the horses. I am fearful that ill should come to his Majesty—the woman does not matter. You are younger and stronger than I, or I would offer my own services to him. Take this and use it. Not for the first time will it be drinking a rebel’s blood.” He crept away and left Han Im with the sword. Han Im belted it on and got to his feet. As he did so a slip of bamboo bearing rapid characters caught his attention. It had been lying by his head on the rough pillow, and he recognised Winter Cherry’s writing.

Han Im moved swiftly towards the room where Yang Kuei-fei was sleeping and opened the door. A single lamp was burning in a corner; by its light he saw, first, the two porcelain stools which had rolled to one side of the room. One had broken into three large pieces. On a little table lay Kuei-fei’s hair-comb, broken very deliberately into halves, side by side. Through the oiled paper window the faint light of early morning gleamed dully.

He took the sword from its sheath and touched the taut bowstring. It gave out a deep low note. He cut it, and the girl’s body fell to the floor. She must have broken her neck when she jumped from the stools, he thought, for Kuei-fei’s face was still beautiful in death, without the red, sullen flesh which Han Im had seen in the faces of others who had thus solved with a bow-string the problems which were too strong for them. He lifted her head and cut the gut of the bow-string where it touched her throat. The sharp sword cut also the fine skin of her neck, but no blood came out.

Han Im threw the girl’s body over his shoulder, put the sword back in its sheath and strode out into the light of the expected sun. Somewhere outside the farm walls he could hear the noise of horsemen in movement. In the courtyard a groom was adjusting the girth of the General’s horse. Han Im stepped up to him and put Kuei-fei’s body over the saddle. Then, as he put his own foot in the stirrup, the groom took him by the arm. Han Im swung himself into his seat behind the body, drew the sword and with one movement, from the height of the horse’s back, cut down through hair and skull. The groom fell, and Han Im, flogging the horse with the flat of his bloody sword, moved out of the open gateway on to the slope of Ma Wei. So, he thought, many an Emperor’s messenger had urged his horse. But this was no Emperor’s message. The world was in ruins. Han Im only knew that, somewhere out there, amidst the slowly wheeling mass of horsemen moving like ghosts in the dawn, Winter Cherry was trying to take the place of the girl whom she thought the Emperor loved.

Winter Cherry, gaudy in the robe which she had taken from the room of the sleeping Yang Kuei-fei early last night, wearing in her short hair the kingfisher hair-pins, walked on, towards the line of horsemen. It would be quick, she thought. One crash, and blackness. She hoped that they would not look too closely at her body afterwards, for some fool might see that they had killed the wrong girl. Still, the clothes and the famous hair-pins should convince men, if they did not look too closely. If Han Im could only keep Kuei-fei quiet at the farm until all this trouble had passed, until the Emperor, back from this journey into the further provinces, should, returning, meet her whom he loved. She remembered the Emperor’s face, at the time of their first meeting—pale, other-thoughtful, remote. Even later he had still seemed so, even when he had fallen asleep beside her and she had crept out to freedom and . . . to what else? Who was she, to alter the ways of the Gods?

Then she stopped walking, for from one flank of the horsemen a figure moved fast towards her, a figure somehow familiar, with a burden at his saddle-bow. At the same time another horseman, whom she recognised as the Captain of the Guard, rode more slowly towards her from the centre of the line of horsemen. He and Han Im met beside hen

“This is Yang Kuei-fei,” Han Im said. “She has killed herself. The other is a fool girl called Winter Cherry, who thought to alter the will of the Gods. So she dressed herself in the other’s clothes. . . . Help me, quickly. We shall say that I came to kill the Lady Yang mercifully. Then do with me what you will. Only, that the Emperor may be comforted—for he would not have liked this—your men had better ride over her body thoroughly. Then the marks of the bow-string will not be seen. Good, the girl has fainted. That makes easy what before would have required words of explanation. Change their clothes.”

The two horses from which they dismounted served as a screen from the ring of horsemen. Soon Yang Kuei-fei lay on the ground in her own robe, the kingfisher hair-pins in her hair. Han Im swung Winter Cherry where the other girl’s body had been.

“When I have restored this girl to her parents,” Han Im said, “I shall be at your pleasure.” He mounted behind the unconscious girl and rode off, back towards the farm. As he rode, he thought how long it was since he had felt a horse’s saddle between his knees. He thought, too, of other things which he had not felt for a long while. Winter Cherry opened her eyes, and he patted her on the shoulder as he rode.

“Go to sleep,” he told her. “The Gods were too strong for you.”

Behind them, clearer now as the light rose, the line of men formed into two ranks, then into four. Thus, in four waves, the line moved forward stirrup to stirrup with gathering speed. Ahead of them a coloured patch lay in the grey dust. The horses in the first rank tried to avoid it, but those of the second, following closely, had no time to do so. Nor the third, nor the fourth. Then they wheeled about and cantered back over the same ground.

When Han Im reined up the horse in the courtyard, he found General Tung standing waiting for him beside the groom’s body. General Tung said amusedly: “You take my horse, you slay my groom, and then you bring back the beast in a lather. It seems to me that an explanation is possible.”

Han Im answered, as he stood Winter Cherry on her feet: “The explanation is a simple one. This girl tried to take the place of the Lady Yang, not knowing that the Lady Yang had hanged herself. I found the Lady Yang’s body, came out here and borrowed your horse. The groom tried to hinder me, and as time was precious, I took what steps you see.”

“But for a eunuch to carry a weapon,” the General protested, “is a contradiction in terms. Have I not seen that sword before?”

Han Im replied: “It was given me by Father Peng, who had overheard the conspiracy and felt that I, a younger man, was more fitted to cope with action than he. Also, I felt that your soldiers were more likely to listen to me, in their present rebellious mood, if I bore with me some form of argument.”

“And this groom, Seuen?” the General asked.

“It seems to me,” Han Im answered, “that he, the cause and centre of the conspiracy, at once its focus and excuse, could best pay by his death for the privilege of having written history. Besides, you will see from this girth, which is indisputably slack, that Seuen, whatever else he may have been, was not a good groom.”

General Tung observed: “Yet, at a time like this, all men are useful. We are short of officers. The rebels are moving towards us, and we, therefore, move on before them. I should value your cooperation, if only”—he laughed—“in return for the loss of my groom. And now, girl, you can go and tell the Emperor of the death of the Lady Yang. None of us dare do so. Tell him that we move in the time it takes to prepare his carriage.” When she had gone, he went on to Han Im: “We must find you a horse, suitable for your weight. Come.”

“You must keep the sword,” Father Peng said to Han Im, “for it will be used in the service of our Emperor, and I am too old to use it myself. You are younger: you have no distractions to take your mind from the duty of a soldier, as have ordinary men. Study of the military art demands a wholehearted attention. Women divert the minds of generals from the correct disposition of their forces, so that they become more skilled in scaling a bed than in attacking a city.

Han Im replied: “I have led a soft life. The affairs of the palace have claimed my attention: my muscles are not as hard and tireless as a soldier’s should be. And yet, when I felt my knees on the horse’s saddle this morning, when the wind past my ears sang a song of action, I was once again my younger self Perhaps with exercise and training . . .”

Father Peng nodded: “You will find no difficulty once the mind is fixed.”

Han Im answered: “I trust that you are right. The Master says: To lead an untrained army into battle is murder. But he also observes that it is pleasant to learn by persistence and effort. I may take both these sayings to myself.”

Father Peng gave him a number of writings in his own, clear calligraphy. “These are my notes on tactics,” he said, as he bowed Han Im out.

In his dream, the Emperor moved uneasily. He was hunting, following in his carriage the assembly of men who advanced over the great Park at Chang-an towards the game driven to them by the beaters. In his hand the bow, in his fingers the arrow, ready to the string. Towards him came the first of the beaten game, a hare. In long leaps it covered the ground, and he fitted the arrow to the string and made to draw the bow. Ever nearer the hare lolloped. The officers on each side of him loosed their arrows, but not at the hare. The hare was his. Then, as it came so close that he could see its harried eyes, the hare suddenly fell in its tracks, struck by no arrow. The horses avoided the dead hare, as horses will, but the wheel of the carriage passed over it, and the Emperor, calling out with hoarse throat, awoke.

Winter Cherry stood before him.

“She is dead?” the Emperor asked, without expression in his voice, and sat on his bed.

Winter Cherry, taken unawares, said: “Yes. You knew?”

The Emperor was silent for a moment, his fingers tearing at the edge of the rug on the bed. Then he answered (and his voice was so low that she could hardly hear it): “I had a dream. How did she die? No—do not tell me. In my dream the wheel of my carriage passed over her body. I could not prevent it. I was hunting . . .”

Winter Cherry said: “It was quick. You need not fear that she suffered pain. Now you must prepare for your journey, for word has come that An Lu-shan has moved from the Capital towards us. Your carriage is being prepared.”

“I would rather die here, with her,” he answered, “but by so doing I should lead others to their death, too. So I must go, as you say. But my heart is empty, and I move without my own wish, like the branches of a tree in the wind. When I visited the home of the Master, Confucius, and attended the sacrifices for Lu Dukedom, I saw that my own death would follow. And it is not I who die, but she! The brightness of our lives has faded, her loveliness will never again colour my eyes. Can I see her?”

Winter Cherry helped him to put on his outer clothes.

“I do not think there will be time,” she said, mothering him.

“Do you, too, ride to the West with me?” the Emperor asked, with an unaccustomed humility in his voice.

“That is for you to say,” she replied. “I belong to you.”

He answered: “Nothing belongs to me. No one belongs to me. You are free to go and to come, as you wish. If you so desire, you may return to your father’s house.”

She kotowed, and left him, going to the great hall where the tablets of the ancestors of the Peng family were ranged on long black-wood tables round the walls.

Peng Mooi-tsai moved silently along the passage with her bowl of hot broth. As she went she reflected on the unwisdom which her elders showed in trying to keep a girl of twelve ignorant of what went on all round her. True, such supposed ignorance was a part of the system to which everyone seemed accustomed, and she could hardly blame her parents for doing what all other parents seemed to do.

Of course, Mooi-tsai thought, she would be punished for what she was doing now, and her filial duty made her quite sure that the punishment would be justified. But if her eldest sister had been taken away as a palace-girl for the Emperor, why was it necessary to cover all this with a veil of silence? Was it not honourable to be one of the Emperor’s house? She remembered the tears which had seemed never out of her mother’s eyes when Winter Cherry had gone away, and the almost fierce instruction to be doing something useful when she had asked a reason for this immoderate and prolonged sorrow. And she could have comforted her mother, then, so capably . . . Her sister Peng Mei was not nearly so able to say the right thing.

It could not be so very wrong to serve the Emperor by bringing him hot, good broth.

She pushed open the door and tiptoed in, creeping towards the bed.

“Your Majesty,” she whispered, a little overcome by the occasion, but using the extreme formality which she had come to associate with Emperors, “would like a bowl of broth to defeat the morning chill?” She was a little proud of the phrase “defeat”.

Ah Lai opened one eye and looked at her in the gloom.

He said: “I seem to have slept no longer than the flutter of a butterfly’s wing. Is it already morning?”

Mooi-tsai replied: “The sun is just showing. I hope that the broth is neither too hot nor too cold, your Majesty.”

Ah Lai realised that the mistake might prove amusing. His back was to the light, and he kept it so. “Who are you?” he asked, in the voice of an older man.

She said: “I am called Peng Mooi-tsai. My father is Peng Yeh, and my mother is called the Lady of the Tapestry. I am twelve years old, and have two sisters and one brother. I name the sisters first, since the fame of the Lady Yang Kuei-fei has made that the fashion.”

He looked at her as she knelt there with the broth-bowl in her hands, and saw how like a younger Winter Cherry she was. Her long plaited hair was bound with the red cord of an unmarried girl, and her eyebrows owed nothing to her own art. Her garments were of a quiet dove-blue, her collar cut high.

“You are only twelve?” he asked. “I should have thought you older.”

She replied: “My sister is older, and my elder sister older still. Will you be pleased to drink the broth, your Majesty?”

Ah Lai replied: “Set it down, and stand up. There is no need for you to behave in my presence with such extreme formality. Why have you brought me this broth?”

She answered him: “My eldest sister is a palace-girl. My parents and my brother and sister think that I am ignorant about it, but I am not. It is a great honour to be taken into your palace, as Winter Cherry was taken. I should like to go myself and see the great buildings, the parks, the famous men who move about your Majesty, the poets and the singers . . .”

“There is nothing worth while to be seen at an Emperor’s palace,” he told her, and saw her disappointment “You need not think that I am telling you that in order to deceive you: it is true. Men, there, are just men like everybody else—more anxious for fame, perhaps, more seeking of personal advancement. Life there is a shallow shell, not to be spoken of in the same breath as this life here, close to the earth, under the bright skies and the rain of heaven. You are fortunate to be what you are. You surely did not hope to follow your sister?”

She replied: “That would be too much to hope. But wherein is she better fitted to entertain your Majesty than I? I can sing a little, and play the lute, and even dance. She can only play a flute, and that not very well. Yet they took her. And now she has come back here, to her home, with your Majesty. They think that I do not know that, either, but then they never expect me to listen at doors, so that I heard Winter Cherry and my mother talking when Winter Cherry came back. Why is my sister not here with you now? Do you not want her any more?”

“You would not like to be a palace-girl,” Ah Lai told her. “You are put with many other girls in the Pepper Rooms, to be looked after by old women and eunuchs, and then, very seldom, you might be sent for by the Emperor when he picks your name, usually by chance, from one thousand others, and a eunuch carries you in to the Emperor wrapped in a swansdown quilt but with no other clothes at all, and leaves you to the Emperor, Would you like that?”

“If your Majesty wishes it,” she answered. “But could I not come in myself, without being carried, as I have come now? Besides you speak as if you were looking on at the Emperor and me. Why do you speak of the Emperor as if he were someone else? You . . .”

The door opened, and Han Im, the sword still belted on, brought in Winter Cherry.

Han Im said: “This girl was trying to get herself killed in place of Kuei-fei. She did not know that Kuei-fei had hanged herself with a bowstring. Fortunately I was in time. But you had better get up and prepare to ride, Ah Lai, for we move on. News has come that the rebels are moving after us from Chang-an. Is this the girl’s sister? Then she can look after her while you get ready to ride with the Emperor. Your duties must be considered before your pleasures.” He went out.

Peng Mooi-tsai said: “So you are not the Emperor? Of course, I can see you now that the light is better. I would not have spoken so if I had known how young you were. You should have told me at once. And how did you know all that about girls carried being in to the Emperor?”

Winter Cherry took Mooi-tsai by the hand and led her out.

Ah Lai dressed himself with care, for not only was he to ride into the far west in the Emperor’s train, but it was still possible that, in the interval before their going, he would have the chance to explain to Winter Cherry why he had been innocently deceiving her sister. It was of no use now, but he might manage to see her alone.

Winter Cherry knelt before the tablet of her great-grandfather in the Hall of Ancestors. It was quiet here, and a thin column of smoke rose straight into the still air from the little pile of sandalwood which she had put in the burner.

“Do you, my ancestors, make of me and my desires what is best for the honour of our family. I have been honoured in the bed of the Emperor, and now the Emperor flees before his rebel enemies. I have been honoured in the declared love of Ah Lai, and now Ah Lai rides to his death in the Emperor’s service against these rebels. I have tried to save the life of the Emperor’s beloved, the Lady Yang Kuei-fei, but in vain, for she is now crushed beneath the feet of the horses, her garments are stained with blood and dust, her kingfisher pins are trampled underfoot, and the glory in the Emperor’s eyes has gone, leaving an empty space.

“Do you, my ancestors, guide the spirits of the earth and sky towards whatever doom they may purpose for me, for I have failed my father and my father’s father, and from me no fame has come to the house of Peng.

“Do you, my ancestors, give me some sign that the end may not be far off, that shame shall not always smear my name and through me the name of my family, and that the end, again, may be near. Give me a sign.”

Outside, the stillness was broken by the hoofs of horses, and the doorway into the Hall became suddenly bright and then dark again.

Ah Lai said, as he stood there: “I am going. I thought that you would be here. How straight the smoke goes up.”

She replied: “Are you my sign? Are you the sign that I was praying for?”

“Your ancestors must have heard you,” he said. “I did not know that I was an answer to your prayer, since for long, it seems, you have not looked at me as once you looked. But if prayers bring me, here I stand, about to go again.”

She cried, still kneeling: “Can I believe the sign?” The smoke wavered, became again a ruled line to the dimness above. “Can I believe? It matters nothing if the past has been cruel, if I can believe.”

Ah Lai moved towards her as a voice called from outside: “They are going!”

Winter Cherry said, very softly: “If you were not going . . .”

He cried: “Believe the sign.”

Then the door opened and closed a second time, and Winter Cherry was alone before the tablet of her great-grandfather.

She cried, noiselessly.

The Lady of the Tapestry sent a messenger to recall her son from the village, now that Yang Kuei-fei was dead.