The Incarnations

6. Night Coming

Tang Dynasty, AD 632

I

STRANGERS KNOCK IN the night. The common folk of Kill the Barbarians Village, seeking out your mother to confess the torments of the soul. You, a boy named Bitter Root, huddle with the Runts in the corner, and peer through the darkness at the Sorceress Wu as she lowers her hawkish nose, shuts her piercing eyes and listens to the tales of woe. Envy and lust. Wrath and revenge. Flames leap in the hearth, and the sorceress chants in an ancient tongue and tosses into the fire a mysterious dust that flashes sulphurous and bright. She decants into vials potions to cure heart-sickness, abort a foetus, or punish a husband who rapes the twelve-year-old servant girl. She sells bottles of deadly nightshade, and hallucinogenic venom extracted from the heavy-lidded toad she keeps in a bamboo cage. She sells amulets and anti-lust charms. She sells a poultice to the cabbage-seller to grow back his amputated foot.

A husband killed by bandits. Too many mouths to feed and nothing but steamed grasshoppers to feed them. These are the misfortunes that forced your mother to turn to the dark arts. And what she lacks in supernatural ability, she makes up for with nerves of steel. For sometimes the strangers come back, accusing her sorcery of being a sham and demanding refunds. The sorceress blames the meddling of evils spirits and offers to sell them antidemon charms. She curses them and slams the door. The sorceress never backs down.

You are Bitter Root, named thus to trick the demons into thinking you are vile-tasting and bad to eat. You are thirteen years old and wild, with never-healing scabs on your knees and your eye-teeth knocked out from falling out of trees. Your hair is filthy and gnarled as roots, and your sun-darkened face grubby and snarling. You are a solitary child. You scorn your pot-bellied little brothers and sisters, whom you call ‘the Runts’, who splash about in the river Mudwash and dare each other to gobble spiders up. You spend your days roaming the Neverdie Forest, toughening to leather the soles of your bare feet. A hunter-gatherer, you steal eggs from nests and trap birds and animals for the stew pot. Stealthy and brave, you part the bamboo saplings and swoop your snake-catching net down on serpents coiled belly-down in the grass. You carry the captured snakes, in a fury of trashing in your net, to your mother. The sorceress kills them and slits their bellies, slicing from fanged head to tail, and extracts the gall bladder and poison sacs for medicinal use.

You are not Sorceress Wu’s first-born. You have an elder sister, whom the sorceress named Brother Coming, to encourage fate to bring her a son. One year older than you, Brother Coming is a mute, and too dim-witted to do even simple chores, such as raking ashes in the hearth or fetching water from the well. Solitary like you, Brother Coming spends her days in the forest, wandering through the maze of trees and whistling with a blade of grass in mimicry of birdcall. But Brother Coming is not predatory. She is a scavenger, not a hunter. She gathers bird skulls and scapulae, dark feathers and jagged stones, and stows her treasures in tree-hollow hiding places. Toads ribbit in her tunic pockets and beetles scuttle in her knotty hair. The Neverdie Forest embraces Brother Coming. When she curls up to sleep on a bed of moss, the trees above her shed a blanket of leaves should the air turn chill. The canopy shifts to shelter Brother Coming should some rain begin to fall.

When you encounter Brother Coming in the Neverdie Forest you ignore her. Your idiot sibling is of no interest to you and you pass her without a nod. Then one day in your thirteenth year you catch Brother Coming stalking you through the trees. Whereas you are forest-coloured, streaked with greens and browns, Brother Coming is pale and conspicuous. Twigs snap and leaves rustle under her feet, frightening the snakes away. ‘Go away!’ you hiss. You hurl clods of mud, which splatter her because she is too feeble-minded to dodge them. You run over and clobber her until she hobbles away.

But an hour later she is back. Stalking you through the trees. You charge at her and knock her down, and as you roll over with her on the leaf-and twig-strewn ground, you notice the swellings on your fourteen-year-old sister’s chest. Curious, you pull up her tunic. You tweak and peek. You poke and pry and probe her with your tongue. As you grope her, Brother Coming lays beneath you, quiet and unprotesting. As you have your way with her, her eyes register neither pleasure nor pain.

Many cycles of the moon go by. Starry constellations come and go in the night sky. Skinny Brother Coming is fattening up. As you lay together in the forest, you sink your hands into the ever-swelling bump to push it flat. But the mound of belly grows fatter by the day, warning you things have gone awry. The Runts notice the change in your sister too. ‘Fatty Coming! Fatty Coming! Waddling like a duck!’ they tease. At supper the Sorceress Wu serves Brother Coming an extra ladle of rice gruel. She prepares nourishing herbal soups for her. The Sorceress Wu narrows her eyes at you, her hook-ended nose flaring in suspicion when you are near.

‘Bitter Root! Bitter Root!’

The sorceress is calling, so you fling your fishing pole down by the edge of the river Mudwash and hurry past the Runts (who are squealing, ‘Worms! Worms! Worms!’ and chasing each other with dangling earthworms). You run up the hill to the mud-walled dwelling, eager to please the sorceress, who lately snarls at the mere sight of you.

‘Here I am,’ you announce.

The sorceress is pacing the trampled-earth floor. She looks up and trepidation flashes in her eyes, before the return of her habitual cast-iron will.

‘Ma?’ you ask. ‘What do you want?’

‘Take off your clothes,’ the sorceress commands.

You obey. You stand there naked. A fire blazes in the hearth and the brass pot bubbles and boils. She tells you to kneel. She binds your wrists and ankles with rope. She plunges the blade of the snake-eviscerating knife into the boiling pot. Suddenly, you understand what she intends to do. Weeping, you beg for mercy.

‘I’ll never touch Brother Coming again! I swear on the graves of our ancestors!’

Tied up like a pig for a spit-roast, you wriggle to the door. The sorceress grabs your hair and presses the knife-edge to your throat. ‘Don’t you dare! Or I’ll slit you from ear to ear.’

You kneel by a chopping board. She grabs your penis and testicles and roughly pulls, threatening to kill you if you don’t hold still. Her other hand holds the knife, raising it high. She is shaking with nerves, but her teeth are gritted with intent as the blade swoops down. You see the blood splatter her pale cheeks before you feel the pain. When the pain comes you scream. You scream with such violence it curdles the air. The sorceress is trembling and bathed in perspiration. The castration is harder than expected. Like beheading a chicken whose stubborn head won’t detach. She hacks and hacks, and at last she pulls her hand away in exultation and relief. The knife clatters to the floor and she opens her blood-soaked fist. And what you glimpse before you lose consciousness will haunt you until the day you die. Your blood-glistening organs in the palm of your mother’s hand. Her smile of triumph at having severed you, at the age of thirteen, from the ranks of men.

Months later a man with a donkey comes from the Kill the Barbarians Village to collect you. You are wearing a hemp tunic and carrying a bundle of clothes. Hanging from the belt of your tunic, in a leather pouch, is a silver trinket box with your embalmed genitals inside. The sorceress hands the donkey man a string of copper cash and issues her instructions.

‘All the way to the city of Chang’an?’ asks the donkey man.

‘All the way to the gates of the Imperial Palace,’ says the Sorceress Wu.

‘And then what?’

‘And then you say, “This is Eunuch Wu. A gift to the Emperor.”’

Foot in stirrup, you clamber up on the donkey, grimacing as you straddle the saddle (though the stump has healed, when pressured it hurts). The sorceress turns her back on you and returns to the mud-walled dwelling. The donkey man grasps the reins of the donkey bridle and leads you away.

II

The very day you leave for Chang’an, water gushes out from between Brother Coming’s legs. Her mouth rounds into a cavern of pain as she keels over, wracked by the spasms within. ‘It’s time,’ observes the sorceress, and sends the Runts to fetch pails of water from the Kill the Barbarians Village well. A short while later, I am born. A baby girl with a vigorous cry in her lungs and no deformities visible to the eye.

As a child, I have no name. The sorceress calls me ‘Girl’ or ‘She-brat’. And later, when I am of crawling age, the Runts call me ‘Doggy’. They pat my head and throw sticks for me to fetch and carry back to them in my mouth. When I am of walking and talking age, the Runts have grown up and gone away to labour on pig farms or be the wives of pig farmers in the other villages of Blacktooth County. Leaving me behind with Brother Coming and the Sorceress Wu.

My childhood is much the same as yours. Strangers knocking in the night. The chanting of spells and magnesium flares in the fireplace. For much of my childhood I am under the impression that Sorceress Wu is my mother and Brother Coming my mute idiot sister. The peasants of Kill the Barbarians Village call me the Wu Child and, owing to the sorceress’s reputation for evildoing, forbid their children from going near me. I am very lonely. Brother Coming won’t play with me, and when she goes into the Neverdie Forest, won’t let me tag along. Rejected and hurt, I bully Brother Coming on our bamboo-mat bedding at night. I slap her, and pinch her black and blue, and get away with it, for she never makes a squeak of protest. I abuse Brother Coming for years, until the evening the sorceress looks over as I am twisting her ear and says slyly, ‘That’s no way to treat your mother, She-brat.’

Shocked, I let go of Brother Coming’s ear. The sorceress laughs. ‘Yes, that’s right. You weren’t squeezed out of my loins, Girl. You are the progeny of incest and rape. Your father was the good-for-nothing rapist and your mother the imbecile next to you. No wonder they spawned a she-brat such as you.’

My grandmother makes no secret of her wish to be rid of me and, afraid of being sold into slavery or married off to a pig farmer, I toil for the sorceress. I cook and clean for her, sweeping the floor and scrubbing the pots and pans, keeping our rammed-earth dwelling spick and span. I am filial and obedient and never answer back. But it’s no good. The year I am thirteen, Sorceress Wu tells me of the arrangements she has made.

‘Girl. You are now betrothed to the Young Master Huang of the Huang family of Goatherd Valley. You are to be wedded next week.’

‘But I don’t want to be married,’ I complain in a small voice.

The sorceress scoffs, ‘Want? Want? Want is neither here nor there! The Huangs are the most prosperous family in Goatherd Valley. A she-brat such as you ought to be on her knees with gratitude!’

The next day the man with the donkey comes from Kill the Barbarians Village. He hoists me up on the saddle, and we clip-clop away from Blacktooth County. No one, not the Sorceress Wu, Brother Coming, nor the Runts, come to bid me farewell. I never see any of the Wu clan again.

III

The grandeur of the Huang family mansion is such that I cling to the donkey reins, too intimidated to dismount. The manor has a glazed-tile roof and the walls are lacquered wood (unlike the sorceress’s mud-walled dwelling, which a thief needs only a pail of water to break into). A servant boy leads me through parlours and halls to a shady courtyard of cypresses and a shimmering pond of carp. I am exhausted from riding on donkey-back for three days, plodding along the river Sveltedeer to the foothills of Mount Weep. I am barefoot, in a tattered robe stitched from a discarded rice sack. A girl with no name. Having inherited the sorceress’s hump-backed nose, I lack even prettiness as a saving grace. What if the Huang family are disappointed and send me back? What bloodcurdling punishment would the sorceress mete out should that happen?

‘She’s here! She’s here!’ a woman chimes.

Master Huang and his wife enter the courtyard, a handsome couple in black damask robes of mourning, both tall and stately, with unpocked skin and fine sets of ivory teeth undamaged by rot. Wife Huang claps her hands in delight. She sweeps towards me and gathers me into her sweet, fragranced embrace. ‘Welcome to the Huang family, beloved Daughter-in-Law!’

Wife Huang then releases me and gazes upon me at arm’s length. ‘Oh you are lovely!’ she beams. ‘How lovely you are!’

Master Huang is more muted in his reception. Sotto voce, he says to his wife, ‘The girl is ugly. Horrendously hooked of nose.’

‘Oh shuush!’ scolds Wife Huang. ‘Can’t you see we are blessed? Once the dirt is scrubbed off she will be a passable bride!’

As Wife Huang fusses over me and Master Huang frowns, I am too timid to utter a word. Young Master Huang, to whom I am betrothed, is nowhere in sight. Shyness prohibits me from asking where he might be.

A pretty maidservant named Duckweed conducts me to a bedchamber with rosewood furniture and a four-poster bed with a canopy of chiffon, where I am to rest before the wedding the following day. Incense braziers burn patchouli and myrrh, and goldfish swim in a flower-and-bird-painted porcelain bowl. I daren’t touch anything, lest I grubby it with my hands.

As Duckweed bathes me in a brass claw-footed tub of water sprinkled with rose petals, she smirks and wrinkles her nose. Granted, I am skinny and fleabitten and turn the water black, but her rudeness offends me. I am about to marry into the most prosperous family in Goatherd Valley. Who is this servant girl to act so haughty and superior? After my bath, I change into a clean linen robe, and Duckweed brings me a tray with bowls of steaming rice, stewed meat and pickled vegetables. Famished, I bolt everything down, pretending not to care as Duckweed titters behind her dainty hand.

Later, as I lie in bed, Wife Huang enters the bedchamber like a visitation from the Goddess of Mercy. She kneels at my bedside and strokes my temples with a gentle smile. Not once in my thirteen years of girlhood has anyone touched me with such tenderness. A lump forms in my throat.

‘Sleep, beloved Daughter-in-Law,’ she whispers. ‘Tomorrow is the wedding. A day of joyous festivity. You need your rest.’

Daybreak. A sunny morning of birdsong, fragrant breezes and cloudless sky. In my wedding robe of embroidered red silk, my hair elaborately braided into the Anticipating Immortals style, I am radiant. In fact, I will shun modesty and own that I am beautiful for the first time in my life. Looking over the guests in the courtyard, I understand the wedding ceremony is to be an intimate affair, with only Master Huang, Wife Huang and an uncle and aunt in attendance. Evidently there has been a recent death in the family, for they are wearing mourning robes of black and are very solemn indeed. The Buddhist monk arrives and speaks in hushed tones with the Huangs. A cockerel is strutting around, cawing and pecking at the ground. Odd, I think. Why is it on the loose? Young Master Huang has not yet come, and I am jittery and dying to know what my husband will be like.

‘May the ceremony begin,’ intones the Buddhist monk. A stable boy comes forth and catches the cockerel, which squawks and flaps. The boy squats besides me, pinning the cockerel’s wings down and holding it steady. Where is Young Master Huang? The monk holds up a copper censer by a chain and sways it over the squawking bird and me. Strange blue smoke pours out of the censer, chokingly pungent and stinging my eyes. The monk begins to chant and, with an ear attuned to sorcerers’ dialects, I hear he is chanting not Buddhist sutras but ancient dark magic. He is not a monk, but a shaman. A necromancer, conjuring spirits, summoning the dead. The black-robed wedding guests are silent, except for Wife Huang, who sinks to her knees, sobbing and beating her chest. Where is Young Master Huang? The shaman’s eyes roll backwards in their sockets and, as he ululates, I hear the ancient Chinese for ‘marry’ and understand I am being joined in holy matrimony with the bird.

The wedding banquet is a sumptuous feast served with silver ewers of wine. Not a morsel passes my lips and I don’t speak a word. The bridegroom, however, is in high spirits, throwing his wattle-and-combed head back and crowing vociferously, scampering about on clawed feet and pecking up the grain Master Huang scatters for him. Wife Huang has recovered from her sobbing. Whenever our eyes meet across the banquet table she beams and raises her goblet of plum wine: ‘To our son’s new bride!’

After the banquet, Duckweed the maidservant leads the cockerel and me to the bridal chamber. She bolts the latticed door when she leaves, locking the newly-weds in. Unperturbed, the cockerel hops and squawks and flaps up on the conjugal bed. He struts in a half-circle then defecates on the bedspread. Has the son of the Huangs died and been reincarnated into this bird? Is that what the ceremony was about?

‘Young Master Huang?’ I call experimentally.

The bird claps its beak and blinks its beady eyes. I shake my head at my foolishness then decide to call the cockerel Young Master Huang anyway, as he responds to it.

As the cockerel puffs up his feathers and swaggers about, I sit on the edge of the four-poster bed in my red silk wedding gown, wringing my hands on my lap as I ponder the fate that awaits me. Am I really to spend the rest of my days wedded to a bird? What a preposterous destiny! Then, out of nowhere, I hear the low cackle of the Sorceress Wu: ‘Wretched she-brat! Character determines destiny. Fate is the excuse of the spineless and weak!’ And though it was my evil grandmother who sold me into this strange predicament, her words lend me strength.

Dusk creeps into the bridal chamber, and I plot and wait as the shadows thicken. My spouse is quieter now, grooming his plumage, plucking out the odd feather not to his liking with his beak. When at last the bolt slides back and the door creaks open, the bridal chamber is completely dark. It is Duckweed, bringing the supper tray. I needn’t see her face to know she is smirking. Duckweed lowers the tray on a rosewood table then turns to the dresser to light the oil lamp. I waste no time. I leap up, grab the water carafe from the tray and smash its neck against the bedpost. At the shattering of glass, Duckweed gasps and spins round. I knock her head with my knuckles and drag her to me by her hair. I touch the jagged edge of the carafe to her throat.

‘Don’t scream,’ I warn her, ‘or I’ll stab out your eyes!’

Duckweed whimpers. In the flickering oil-lamp light her eyes are frantic. Not so high and mighty any more.

‘Tell me what is going on. Speak!’

Duckweed speaks. A breathless rush of words. Young Master Huang died in a tragic hunting accident the year before. He’d passed on before marrying, so his parents wanted to find him a bride, a companion for the afterlife. I was the Spirit Bride in a Spirit Wedding and the cockerel the stand-in for the Spirit Groom. Then, with some satisfaction, Duckweed adds that the eminent Huang family would never have wed me to their handsome son were he alive.

‘Now let me go!’ Duckweed weeps. ‘I have told you everything.’

‘Liar!’ I spit. ‘What happens next?’

Duckweed won’t say. I scratch the broken glass of the carafe against her cheek, drawing blood. ‘Oh no! Not my pretty face!’ she wails. The maidservant then reveals the final stage of the Spirit Wedding: the Sacrificial Ceremony. The following morning I am to be ritually slaughtered then laid to rest beside the corpse of Young Master Huang in the Huang family mausoleum, joining him in eternal sleep. I thank Duckweed, then I beat her with my fists until she is limp and barely conscious. I rip off my accursed silk wedding gown and change into Duckweed’s servant robes and woven reed sandals. Out of spite I snatch up the Spirit Bridegroom, tucking him under my arm. I slip out of the unbolted door and make my getaway.

IV

I flee through the night. The runaway Spirit Bride, dashing pell-mell through paddy fields of croaking frogs, leaping over ditches and streams. ‘Run! Run! Run!’ squawks Young Master Huang under my arm. And I obey, hurtling through the darkness without pause for breath or to ease the stitch in my side. The Huang family own a stable of horses and will come galloping for me at dawn.

Where in the Middle Kingdom am I fleeing to? As far away from Goatherd Valley as possible. And then, who knows? As I tear through the night, I think of you, the father I have never met. Eunuch Wu of the Imperial Palace in Chang’an, loyal servant to the Emperor Taizong. I decide to go to Chang’an and find you. I am your daughter, and perhaps our blood bond will oblige you to find me lodgings and work. Perhaps you will find me a position as a chambermaid in the Imperial Palace. Perhaps the Emperor Taizong will fall in love with me, and I will ascend from servant girl to empress. And with these fatuous thoughts of fame and fortune in my head, I run and run, wishing I could grow wings and fly to Chang’an.

By sunrise I am staggering beneath the strange turquoise peaks of the Tiltingsky mountain range, following the Turnabout River to its end. Under my arm Young Master Huang stabs at me with his beak, wriggling to be set free. Fed up with his squirming, I wring his neck. Widowed at the age of thirteen, I tuck my spouse’s feathered corpse back under my arm and stagger onwards, not daring to stop. At sundown I build a fire, pluck Young Master Huang, then roast and eat him. He is delicious. As I suck the marrow from his bones and lick bird fat from my fingers, I contemplate the journey ahead. The city of Chang’an is three years away by foot, and one year by horse and cart. A thousand-league journey I must rise at the crack of dawn to begin. Sated with bird, I fall asleep, full of uncertainty but grateful not to be in the Huang family mausoleum, dead.

The next day, by stroke of good luck, I meet an expedition of merchants travelling northwards to Chang’an. There are eighty merchants in the caravan, riding in eighty horse-drawn wagons carrying exotic spices and fabrics, frankincense, silver ewers, skyblue Syrian glass, delicate ostrich-egg cups and countless other frivolous trinkets for the capital’s rich. As well as these exquisite trifles, the merchants have collected many marvels of the plant and animal kingdom to sell to the nobility of Chang’an. Curiosities such as albino frogs and a wise and ancient monkey who can do sums with an abacus. Russian conjoined twins fused at the head (like one man resting his temple against a mirror) and a barebreasted Japanese mermaid, her tail curled up in a barrel of salty water, weeping bitterly to be so far from the sea. In the very last wagon, a cyclops and a wolfman, both shackled at the ankles, play a never-ending game of chess. The wolfman furrows his furry brow and deliberates for hours on end before moving a chess piece with his shaggy paw.

The journey to Chang’an lasts three hundred days and the caravan passes through every landscape of the Middle Kingdom. Terraced hillsides where water buffalo pull ploughs. Holy mountains with peaks so high they penetrate the cloudy realm of the Gods. Vast stretches of barren nothingness where not even the wild grasses grow. As the scenery changes by the day, the heavens above us change by the hour. The Gods of Thunder brew up dark lagoons of cloud that the Gods of Rain turn into heavy deluges and floods. The Gods of Wind bluster and chase flocks of cloud across the sky, until the Gods of Bright Skies clear the firmament for the sun.

During my time in the merchant expedition I am wretchedly miserable, as for three hundred days I ride in the wagon of the Merchant Fang, who’d taken a fancy to me and rescued me from the roadside when every other wagon had rolled on by. The old merchant is blotchy with gout and has many yellow rolls of fat under his robes cut from fine expensive cloth. The merchant calls me ‘wench’ and likes to fondle me on his lap and tickle me with his beard. Needless to say, my passage to Chang’an is not free of charge, and within months I have a bulging belly. By the time the caravan enters the gates of Chang’an and proceeds up the Vermilion Bird Avenue with much trumpeting of horns, clashing of cymbals and weeping of merchants affected by the homecoming, I add to the cacophony a cry of pain as the Merchant Fang’s baby prepares to come out. As the merchant already has a wife and a brood of eleven children, to him the progeny in my womb is a bothersome thing. So when the baby is born lifeless in a boarding house on Drum Tower Lane, the Merchant Fang sighs with relief. ‘Well, that’s that then,’ he says, pulling a blanket over his stillborn son. He tosses the midwife a string of coppers, bids me farewell and is on his way.

V

Springtime in Chang’an, the tree peonies in blossom. Bleeding, weeping and limping, I stagger about the streets of the twelve-gated city, to the Imperial Palace in the north. In a daze, I roam in and out of the city wards, gazing in wonderment at the sights. Row upon row of wooden houses, vertiginously soaring up to three storeys in height. Avenues of horse-drawn carts, clattering at breakneck speeds, and magnificent palanquins borne aloft on the shoulders of manservants, velvet curtains hiding the distinguished noblemen inside.

The Eastern Market teems with common folk and Uighurs and Persians and Europeans trading their wares. I wander by stalls of millet, bamboo shoots, pigs and Tibetan slaves in pens. Arabian stalls of alfalfa, pomegranate, spices and wool. I wander into the market square, where magicians in dark booths sell python’s bile for melancholia and dragon’s bones for fatigue. Troupes of buskers strum zithers and pipas, and a dancing bear shambles on his hind legs as his master waves a birch wand. A storyteller has attracted a crowd with his tale of the Sea-dragon King who lives in a palace under the ocean and feasts on opals and pearls.

I ask passer-by after passer-by, ‘Excuse me, which way to the Imperial Palace?’

And in this manner, I gradually find my way there.

I arrive at the gates of the Imperial City at sunset. Though I am tired and aching to the marrow of my bones, the magnificence of the palace rejuvenates me. Stone lions roar at the Vermilion Gates and the palace rooftops, curved elegantly from ridge to eaves, are shining gold in the setting sun.

I accost an armoured guard at the gate.

‘Excuse me. Could you pass on a message to Eunuch Wu? Could you tell him his long-lost daughter has come to Chang’an to see him. I don’t mind waiting here while you fetch him.’

The guard beats me so hard with his spear he knocks out a tooth, and this is how I learn that commoners are not meant to approach the gates of the Imperial City without an invitation bearing the imperial seal. I would have to contact you through other means.

VI

I spend a night shivering in a ditch, then in the morning return to the Eastern Market to look for work. I go to Butchers Lane, Ironmongers Lane, Axe-makers Alley, and Cloth-weavers Lane, in and out of every shop. ‘I am hungry and strong,’ I say. ‘I am willing to work for a crust of bread.’ But no one wants me. Not even the human-waste collectors who trundle wheelbarrows from privy to privy. I am starving. I go over to the gangs of beggars rattling begging bowls in the market square. The first gang of beggars tells me to go away. ‘Only those with missing limbs can beg here,’ they say, waving me away with stump-ended arms. The second gang tells me to get lost too: ‘Only the blind or one-eyed allowed here.’ I glance over at the third gang, swatting at the flies buzzing over their pustule-weeping skin, and realize I lack the requisite skin disease.

I am at my wits’ end. How will I survive in this black-hearted city? I may as well crawl back into the ditch and wait to die, as the Heavens must have decreed. Then, out of nowhere, I hear the cackling of the Sorceress Wu — borne by the Daemons of Wind from that mud-walled dwelling over a thousand leagues away. ‘Wretched she-brat,’ she cackles. ‘Character determines destiny. Courage and boldness. Not fate.’ And goaded thus, I holler at the top of my lungs, ‘Has anyone any work for me? I am hungry and strong! I can work as hard as any man. I will toil like a dog! I will toil until I sweat out my blood! I am willing to do anything!’

‘Anything?’

A pedlar of candy apples with scheming eyes and hog bristles spouting out of his chin stalls his pushcart nearby. The pedlar holds out a sugar-coated apple on a stick, and my stomach growls.

‘Anything,’ I repeat.

I stumble to him. I snatch the sugar-coated apple and, lightheaded with hunger, I take a bite. The pedlar shows his stumpy brown teeth in a sly grin.

‘Then come with me.’

VII

‘I see you’ve lost your virtue then,’ says Madam Plum Blossom as she peers between my legs. ‘Pity. Customers pay a fortune to defile a girl with her purity intact.’

She orders me to strip for inspection. She prods and pokes. Tweaks and peeks. She squeezes my breasts and tuts.

‘Sallow complexion. . Hump-backed nose. . Sour, down-turned mouth. . Knocked-out tooth. . Chest like a boy. .’

But in spite of her harsh and negative appraisal, Madam Plum Blossom likes me.

‘There’s some fighting spirit in you,’ she says. ‘The gentleman callers like a girl with fire in her belly. Night Coming. That will be your name. Night Coming. Yes. Can’t think of a better sobriquet than that!’

When the pedlar said he would take me to a brothel in the Gay Quarters of Chang’an, hopes of fame and fortune rang out in my head. On the long journey to Chang’an the Merchant Fang had waxed lyrical about the Gay Quarters and their legendary brothels, such as the House of Willowy Enchantresses and the Parlour of the Golden Peaches, frequented by aristocracy, imperial scholars and literati.

According to the Merchant Fang, the courtesans of the Gay Quarters are classical beauties with lunar skin, scallion fingers and tresses dark as ravens’ plumage. They flutter about like exotic birds in an aviary, in the finest, most intricately embroidered robes. Such is their beauty, boasted Merchant Fang, that should they happen by your hometown, the common folk of Kill the Barbarians Village would mistake them for immortal goddesses and lay sacrificial offerings of slaughtered pigs at their feet.

Not content with mere pulchritude, the courtesans of the Gay Quarters have many talents and accomplishments. They are gregarious hostesses and poetesses, enlivening banquets with witty repartee and verses composed on the spot. They sing like songbirds and are skilled musicians, strumming the zither and playing the lute and flute. They are intellects educated in the Five Classics and Daoist and Confucian philosophy, and keen to engage in verbal jousting and philosophical debate. The life of a celebrated courtesan, whose patrons and admirers are the most powerful men in Chang’an, was very appealing to me. So my hopes were dashed when the pedlar brought me to the Hummingbird Inn in Old Temple Lane, which makes no pretence of being a high-class establishment.

‘We don’t put on any airs and graces here!’ laughs Madam Plum Blossom. ‘We’re a lowly brothel, for commoners! For scoundrels, rascals and ne’er-do-wells. Hiring our cunts out. That’s our job. We make no pretences to the contrary. We can’t sing or dance and the only verse we compose is doggerel and bawdy rhymes. But our customers come to our parlour and have themselves a rollicking good time! I’ll teach you all the tricks of the trade, Night Coming. I was an excellent whore in my day. A veritable snake-charmer. .’

Proprietress of the Hummingbird Inn for twenty years, Madam Plum Blossom is a cheerful woman with a loud and raucous laugh. The pastimes she is most fond of include ale drinking, gorging herself with cakes and tutoring Master Xing, her Burmese parrot, to curse and sing vulgar little ditties for the gentlemen callers. Proud of her voluptuous figure, Madam Plum Blossom is often tethered to a brass mirror, admiring her wide hips and the ample cleavage she flaunts with a low-cut décolletage. Though most madams of the Gay Quarters have a reputation for being mean-spirited and quick-tempered, quoting Confucius as they beat their girls for alleged wrongs (‘Those!’ whack ‘who err!’ whack ‘on the side of strictness!’ whack ‘are few indeed!’ whack), Madam Plum Blossom spares us the rod, being too jolly of temperament for such corporal spite. Though most madams keep their daughters imprisoned under lock and key, Madam Plum Blossom encourages us to venture out into the hustle and bustle of Chang’an on daily constitutionals. The warm-hearted proprietress quickly becomes like a mother to me.

The other two prostitutes at the Hummingbird Inn, Moonglow and Heavenly Lotus Flower, are nowhere near as kind. ‘Stinking southerner,’ they mutter, pinching their noses when I am near. But Madam Plum Blossom tells me to pay them no heed.

‘Don’t mind them, Night Coming. They’ve no right to put on airs. Heavenly Lotus Flower used to be a scullery maid called Appleseed, and Moonglow’s husband is a dissolute wastrel who sold her to pay off his gambling debts.’

As I am a fledging in the bedchamber, Madam Plum Blossom prepares me for brothel life by having me tryst with the young stablehand from down the lane. She stands at the bedside as the boy and I fumble together, clumsy and maladroit, haplessly muddling through the conjoining of our yin and yang parts. Though we go at it until I am quite saddle-sore, Madam Plum Blossom casts a critical eye over the proceedings. Her arms crossed, her lips a thin line of disapproval, she scolds, ‘Don’t be so coy, Night Coming! There are more ways to make Clouds and Rain than by lying on your back, y’know. And why are you flinching? That’s his Jade Stalk he’s stabbing you with, not a dagger!’

Exasperated, she teaches me how to straddle the stablehand and rise up and down in a style known as Riding the Unicorn Horn. ‘This position is very good for the elderly and infirm,’ she advises. ‘As well as veterans who have fought in many battles and are missing their limbs.’

The tutorial underway, Madam Plum Blossom drills the stable boy and me with step-by-step instructions, through the Raising the Yin to Meet the Yang position, the Two Dragons Who Fight until They Drop, and the Silkworm Spinning a Cocoon. The stable boy and I are soon quite knackered, pink in the cheeks and out of breath from flailing and contorting our limbs. The first tutorial reaches its climax when Madam Plum Blossom is teaching me the best technique for Playing the Jade Flute, and the stable boy, no longer able to contain his excitement, spurts the Jade Liquor into my mouth. Madam is very cross when I gag and grimace and spit.

‘Impoliteness!’ she scolds. ‘One mustn’t spit the Jade Liquor as though it scalds the tongue. One must swallow and smile.’ After twenty years of whoredom, Madam Plum Blossom’s knowledge is as boundless as the sea. ‘Men have all sorts of peccadilloes,’ she tells me. ‘Some men like to Penetrate the Red during a woman’s moon cycle, or piddle on a woman out of the Jade Watering Spout. Some men like to poke a woman in the back passage, which is called Pushing the Boat Upstream.’

When she suggests I attempt to Push the Boat Upstream with the stable boy, I protest I cannot imagine a more agonizing suffering. But I then try it, and it’s not so bad once I am used to the clogged-up sensation in my rear end.

‘They come here to do the things their wives won’t do, you see,’ Madam Plum Blossom says, ‘unless they have a delightfully wicked and depraved wife, who may come to watch her husband go at you, and then Mirror Dance with you, which is how two women enact the Clouds and Rain.’

The stable boy is fifteen and his family name is Hogspit. Though he takes pains to wash and comb his hair before coming to the Hummingbird Inn, he is still a mucky boy who stinks of horse sweat and manure, and in spite of his passion in the bedchamber, my Peony Pavilion never moistens with dew. Madam Plum Blossom likes the stable boy, however, as he has stamina and obeys her command not to spill his yang essence until the lesson’s end. Only once does he get swept away in the act of Clouds and Rain and deviate from the tutorial. A rapturous look in his eyes, Hogspit the stable boy hoists my legs over his shoulders in the Starving Horse Rushes to the Trough position and thrusts his slobbery tongue in my mouth. Madam Plum Blossom calls him to heel, smacking his buttocks with a birch wand and warning him to make Clouds and Rain only in the manner that she dictates or else.

After the third lesson of the bedchamber the stable boy confesses that he has fallen in love with me. This is very bothersome. Especially when he starts bringing me small tokens of his affection, such as the skull of a rat he found in the stable, and a pig’s trotter pickled in brine. One night I am woken by a hail of stones on my window. The stable boy is outside in the cobbled lane.

‘Elope with me, Night Coming!’ he calls. ‘Run away with me and leave your life as a common strumpet behind!’

Disgruntled to be woken, however, I shout down that a life of harlotry is far preferable to the family name of Hogspit, and go back to bed.

Meticulous and thorough in my education, Madam Plum Blossom supplements the practical tutorials with theoretical lessons. During the day we peruse the Manual of the Bedchamber, the leather binding creaking as we flip through hundreds of illustrations of the two-headed, eight-limbed beast.

‘Endowments come in all shapes and sizes,’ Madam Plum Blossom says, ‘and some are very curious indeed. Endurance also differs from man to man. Some men spend their yang essence in very few strokes, like our customer Ten-strokes Li. And an unfortunate few, such as Hopeless Chen, spill their yang before even penetrating the Vermilion Gates. And then there are men who need tens of thousands of strokes to spend. Men such as these are nuisances, and you’ll be at it until cockcrow unless you clench the lotus shaft and use some tricks to hurry them up!’

While gleeful on the subject of Clouds and Rain, on the subject of love Madam Plum Blossom gets a cold and steely look in her eye.

‘Beware men who swear eternal oaths of love, Night Coming! Men speak all kinds of devilry in the throes of lust. They’ll promise to marry you, or take you as a concubine. But at the end of the day they want a wife from a respectable home, with her Vermilion Gates intact. Two of my girls have fallen ill from lovesickness. Heavenly Snapdragon shaved her head and went to live in a nunnery, and Celestial Moonbeam suicided by swallowing needles. Armour yourself, Night Coming, against men who’ll try to swindle you with blandishments and declarations of undying love. Or else the dalliance won’t end in a wedding song. . but a funeral dirge.’

The tutorials end one evening as I am Riding the Unicorn Horn with the stable boy, whose eyes are rolling around in ecstatic bliss. Madam Plum Blossom, standing in her usual spot at the bedside, for the first time has no critique or suggestions to make. She nods swiftly with approval.

‘Very good, Night Coming. You are dexterous and skilled. Agile, nimble and spry. This session will conclude your lessons of the bedchamber. You are now ready to begin your life as a whore.’

VIII

Afternoons at the Hummingbird Inn are spent in the courtyard, drinking jasmine tea in the shade of the cherry tree. Moonglow and Heavenly Lotus Flower prattle to each other as they pose at easels, daubing brushes over mediocre paintings of butterflies alighting on azaleas, or peacocks with fanned-out tails. Madam Plum Blossom reads erotic poetry and nibbles cakes, and Master Xing the Burmese parrot scuttles to and fro on his perch, until the door knocker sounds, and he squawks, ‘Here are the guests! Pour the ale! Light the candles!’ and our working day begins.

A jovial and convivial hostess, Madam Plum Blossom makes no distinction between rich and poor as she serves plum wine, thrusts her bosom about and holds forth with charming small talk. All men (except known bandits and vagabonds) are welcome in her parlour, and her lack of pretension warms the hearts of many. Moonglow and Heavenly Lotus Flower are delightful too, with a knack for being silly and fatuous and making the guests roar with laughter. During my debutante nights at the Hummingbird Inn, I am timorous and shy, and some of the gentlemen callers ask Madam Plum Blossom if she has cut out my tongue. Madam hoots with laughter and playfully slaps her accuser.

‘Oh, you wicked scoundrel! I’ve done no such thing! Night Coming’s a mere apprentice. But soon she’ll be the most popular courtesan in the Gay Quarters. Just you wait!’

Before long I have contorted my limbs into every position in the Manual of the Bedchamber, played over a hundred Jade Flutes and had the Jade Liquor spurted into every orifice (and splattered on other parts, such as my bellybutton or hair). Some men are handsome devils, for whom my Peony Pavilion becomes drenched with dew. Others look and smell as though they haven’t bathed in a year, and Raising the Yin to Meet the Yang with them is an odious chore. Out of professionalism, though, I serve every customer alike, and most with no particular sentiment at all.

During the day I wander around Chang’an, frittering my earnings on frivolities such as puppet theatres, sugar-spun birds on sticks and fortune-tellers (‘This won’t be your only life,’ predicts one physiognomist, stroking the hump of my nose. ‘You will be reincarnated many more times yet.’) Though my new life as Night Coming has begun, I am still determined to find you. Once a week I go to the calligraphy shop on Old Temple Lane and dictate to the old bearded sage there (the one literate person I know) a letter to you.

‘To the Honourable Eunuch Wu,’ the letter usually begins. ‘This is your long-lost illegitimate daughter, Night Coming. .’

The letter ends with my whereabouts and a request that you come and visit. Then I seal the letter and hire a messenger boy to deliver it to the gates of the Imperial Palace. Week after week, the old bearded sage writes my letters in his best ink-brush calligraphy. And week after week, I dispatch them to you, though you never reply.

As the nights of carousing and merry making accrue, I come into my own as a hostess. I at last find my voice, which rings out in the parlour like a tinkling bell, mellifluous and gay.

‘What a charming young wench you are!’ the patrons say. ‘Where in the Celestial Kingdom do you hail from?’

I regale them with tales of Kill the Barbarians Village and the wicked Sorceress Wu. I tell them of the sorceress grinding up concoctions of bat’s gonads, centipedes and menstrual blood with pestle and mortar. I tell them of Turnip-seller Chen who came cradling the turnip he thought was his wife, begging the sorceress to reverse the ‘fox fairy curse’ (in truth, his missus had eloped with a goat herder from Magpie County). I tell them of Pigbreeder Liu, who begged the sorceress for an anti-lust charm to cure his habit of engaging his sows in the act of Clouds and Rain. The guests laugh uproariously and thump the wooden table with their fists.

‘Bravo! What funny little tales, Night Coming! How ignorant these silly, superstitious country folk can be!’

I abhor false modesty, so I shall speak plainly: I am a masterful storyteller. A first-rate raconteur. Kingfisher feathers in my chignon, in flowing satin robes, I stand at the head of the candlelit table of guests, open my mouth, and the extraordinary tales of the common folk of Blacktooth County flow forth. Macabre tales of sorcery and blood-spattered revenge. Romantic tales of tragic star-crossed lovers. Erotic tales of lusty bed-hopping and adultery. I do not exaggerate or embellish. The truth, as witnessed by the granddaughter of the Sorceress Wu, is far stranger than any farfetched imaginings. I have been privy to thousands of people begging for magical intervention in their darkest hour. I have witnessed the sorceress’s cruel and pitiless exploitation of their need.

As I gain in confidence my tales become theatrical performances. I create an atmosphere of suspense, like a striptease artiste, building up to the finale, the climactic scene. I imitate the Sorceress Wu’s shaman act with a sacrilegious thrill, ululating in tongues, eyes rolled back in sockets. I impersonate the country bumpkin accent of Cabbage-seller Qin, buying a poultice to grow back his amputated foot. I am a wit, a comedienne, my humour slapstick or refined. My performances soon last throughout the evening, until the candles have sputtered down to pools of wax.

The legend of Night Coming the Tale-spinning Courtesan spreads throughout the Gay Quarters and every night the Hummingbird Inn is packed. The guests crowd in and drink jugfuls of wine, perhaps fondling Heavenly Lotus Flower or Moonglow on their laps as they listen spellbound to my spine-tingling tales. Silver piles up in our coffers and Madam Plum Blossom is well pleased.

As my star ascends, shining high above Old Temple Lane, I add to my repertoire the Tale of Bitter Root and Brother Coming. I tell of the Neverdie Forest and my conception by sibling incest sixteen years ago. I tell of the Sorceress Wu’s barbaric punishment for your sins against Brother Coming. I tell of how I fled to Chang’an.

‘Gentlemen, my quest here in the city of Chang’an is to be reunited with my father, the Eunuch Wu. I beg of any gentlemen here with imperial connections to let it be known that Night Coming of the Hummingbird Inn wishes with all her heart to meet her father. Pass on this message for me, kind sirs, and I’ll be for ever in your debt!’

Patience is a tree with bitter roots that bears sweet fruit. This is the motto I live by. Patiently I wait for my message to spread from the Gay Quarters to the imperial household, and to the ears of my father. I come to be known as the Eunuch’s Daughter, much to my delight.

IX

‘Night Coming!’ trills Madam Plum Blossom. ‘A gentleman caller is here for you.’ Her voice drops to a whisper. ‘A eunuch from the Imperial Palace.’

A year has gone by since I came to Chang’an. A year of life at the Hummingbird Inn. A year of changing seasons, and now spring is here again. How remarkably apt! My heart leaps and rejoices at the granting of its deepest wish. My father has come!

‘One moment, Madam Plum Blossom!’ I call back. ‘Do serve our guest some tea.’

I am in my bedchamber, having risen after a night of spinning fables and Playing the Jade Flute of a gold merchant from Samarkand. Madam had interrupted me as I stood at the mirror, idly attending to my coiffure and toilette. I stare into the polished oval of brass. Am I a long-lost daughter to make a father proud? I am no longer the starving waif who arrived in Chang’an a year ago. My cheeks are rosy and plump (thanks to Madam’s epicurean tastes and fondness for plying others with cakes), but many late nights of ale-drinking and sinning have tarnished the bloom of my youth. The purity and innocence I once had has vanished, and a knowing, wise-beyond-her-years look haunts my eyes.

I change my scarlet gown with plunging décolletage for a peony-embroidered robe, modest and high in the neck, as becoming a young girl. My lofty chignon cascades down as I pull out the combs of rhinoceros horn. I arrange my loose hair into two chaste plaits and rub the rouge paint off my lips, smearing a white linen hanky as red as a menstrual rag. Shaking, I take a deep breath. ‘Father, here I come. .’ Down the creaking wooden stairs I go.

The eunuch peering into the deep stone well is not you. Call it intuition of the blood, but I know this at once. He nods his turbaned head and strides towards me in a swish of fine robes cut from imperial cloth, and I hide my disappointment behind a warm and welcoming smile. The eunuch has a blue-tinctured pallor and looks ethereal as a fox fairy or spirit, and out of place in our sunny, cherry-blossom-fragranced courtyard. On his perch Master Xing ruffles his feathers and puffs out his chest: ‘A guest is here! A stinking castrato!’ The eunuch’s face wrinkles as he smiles, showing neat rows of little teeth. Under his turban, his eyebrows are feathery and light.

‘Eunuch Talent,’ he says. ‘An honour to meet you, Night Coming, the Tale-spinning Courtesan. I have heard of your magnificent storytelling. You are fast acquiring a mythical status in the Gay Quarters.’

Eunuch Talent is slight as a boy child of about twelve, and his lack of masculine traits suggests he was neutered before puberty. His high and fluting voice is an octave below falsetto, and in it one can detect years of training to restrain its crow’s screech.

‘A pleasure to meet you, Eunuch Talent,’ I say. ‘As you can see, I am but a poor and ignorant country girl. The reputation that you hear of is not one I deserve.’

Madam Plum Blossom bustles into the courtyard with a tray of jasmine tea and cakes of sticky rice and sweet dates. She narrows her eyes at Eunuch Talent, as she has a low opinion of the castrati (‘Never met a neuter who weren’t a malevolent fiend!’) and won’t waste her charms on him. She sets down the tray and goes away.

Beneath the pink blossoms of the cherry tree, Eunuch Talent and I sip at tea and nibble little cakes. Isn’t the spring weather fine? Aren’t the cherry blossoms exquisite? Isn’t the brevity of their flowering expressive of the transience of life? What splendid cakes these are! Etiquette demands the point of his visit be delayed with trivial and meaningless chatter. But impatience wears my politeness thin.

‘Why have you come to see me, Eunuch Talent?’ I ask. ‘Are you acquainted with my father, Eunuch Wu?’

‘Yesssss,’ he hisses, and I half expect to see the flicker of a forked tongue. He gives a smile, thin and calculating.

‘He no longer goes by the name of Eunuch Wu, but Eunuch Loyal One. He is the head of the Department of Housekeeping in the Imperial Palace, and a trusted servant and confidant of the Emperor Taizong. A very powerful castrato indeed.’

‘Does he know of me, his daughter, Night Coming?’ I ask anxiously.

‘Not yet. But I shall tell him. Tomorrow.’

‘A thousand blessings to you, Eunuch Talent!’ I gush. ‘Oh what a kind-hearted soul you are!’

I am not so naïve of course. There is something he wants in exchange. The eunuch smiles, basking in my praise. Then he sighs wistfully and gazes upon me with affected romantic longing.

‘How lovely you are, Night Coming,’ he says. ‘It’s obvious how an enchantress such as you has every man in the Gay Quarters under her spell. One night with Night Coming the Tale-spinning Courtesan would be an honour I would cherish for the rest of my life.’

He strokes his beardless chin and waits for my response. Cast in a role that would challenge even the most skilled of actresses, I smile. ‘Eunuch Talent, the pleasure will be all mine.’

May you sleep with a eunuch! is a curse spat by courtesans who wish evil upon each other, but what ‘to sleep with a eunuch’ means, and why it is a curse, is a mystery to me. How does a eunuch perform the Clouds and Rain? How does a eunuch compensate for his lack of manhood? What does the courtesan do with the mutilated stump? Eunuch Talent ends my ignorance.

To sleep with a eunuch is to be stripped and leered at as the eunuch keeps on his robes. To sleep with a eunuch is to become a scratching post for a neutered cat; to be stabbed with your own rhinestone-studded hairpins and strangled with your own beads. To sleep with a eunuch is to be bitten and grinned at with bloodstained teeth. To see the eunuch’s pale whey face light up as he penetrates you with a balled-up fist, punching its way inside. I clamp down hard on my tongue. My shadow writhes on the wall of the bedchamber, but I won’t give him the satisfaction of tears or a cry of pain.

Eunuch Talent sneers, ‘I saw how you smirked when I asked to spend the night with you. “How can this emasculated fool make love to a woman?” you scoffed. Well, is this not making love? Don’t I penetrate you far deeper than your average man?’

When Eunuch Talent’s vandalism is over, purplish marks of strangulation circle my neck and bite marks throb on my breasts and buttocks; crescents of teeth, upper and lower sets, are embedded in my flesh. On his way out, Eunuch Talent glances back at the blood-spattered bed where I am protectively hugging my limbs. He smiles, proud of the damage he has done. He will request an appointment to see Eunuch Loyal One, head of the Department of Housekeeping, the next day.

‘However,’ he adds, ‘I can’t guarantee he will acknowledge paternity of a low-breed slut like you.’

Then, in a swish of imperial robes, Eunuch Talent is gone.

‘Night Coming! Damn you, child, for not calling me! How could you let that horrid teapot without a spout torture you so? How?’

Sighing and cursing under her breath, Madam Plum Blossom swabs and dabs ointment on my wounds and orders a few days of bed rest. But I won’t hide in my room as though I am ashamed. I surrendered my body to Eunuch Talent in exchange for his services as a messenger. I am not a victim here.

I stand before the polished oval of brass, open a jar of dove’s droppings and rub the snowy-white powder on my cuts and bruises. I change into a sapphire gown and arrange silk scarves over the purple throttle marks on my neck. I colour my blood-drained cheeks and lips with rouge paint, bind my chignon with bright ribbons and go down to the parlour that very evening. I am a whirl of merrymaking, witty banter and joie de vivre. The gentlemen callers, in high spirits, raise their goblets of ale: ‘To Night Coming,’ they say, clinking in toast. ‘Gay as a canary, she tickles the very soul!’

I stand at the head of the table and, eloquent and silver-tongued, compliment every gentleman in turn. I am aching, my body hot and shivery as though infected by the Eunuch Talent’s bites. But my joy and jubilation are genuine. My father is coming to see me. You are on your way.

X

Three quarters of a year go by and you do not come. Many moons wax and wane in the night sky over Chang’an and, convinced you have rejected me, I sink into hopelessness and despair. Evenings in the parlour of the Hummingbird Inn, I drown my sorrows in plum wine, and drunkenly slur morality tales of fathers abandoning daughters and meeting ruinous ends.

‘Is that a jug of vinegar she is drinking instead of ale?’ the gentlemen callers ask Madam Plum Blossom. ‘Have you been feeding her nettles and wasps? What happened to the charming and clever Night Coming we used to know?’

In the morning, when I am moaning and groaning and cradling my throbbing head, Madam Plum Blossom scolds me. Hand on hip, standing in my doorway, she says, ‘What has become of you, Night Coming? Why do you insult the gentlemen callers and drink till you can’t stand? Soon you will be unfit to work in even a notoriously lowly brothel such as ours!’

My head hurts so much I can’t look up at her. Go away, I think. Then, in a gentler tone, Madam Plum Blossom says, ‘Didn’t I warn you never to trust a man, Night Coming? Not even those teapots without a spout. Forget that Eunuch Whatsisname from the palace. You have no need of him. We here at the Hummingbird Inn are all the family you need. .’

Wincing at the stabbing pain behind my eyes, I glare up at her. ‘You common whores aren’t my blood kin! I have imperial connections. I am but one degree of separation from the Emperor Taizong!’

‘Well!’ Madam Plum Blossom sniffs. ‘Who’s been shooting vinegar up your Peony Pavilion? Ain’t no shame in being a whore. We here at the Hummingbird Inn are proud of what we are! And we may not be your blood kin, Night Coming, but we love you far better than him. .’ Madam Plum Blossom turns and leaves, and I hear the wooden stairs creaking as she goes down. Meddling old hag, I think.

And I bury my head in my hands and cry.

Then, one midwinter day, hope returns. I am gazing out of my window at the mesmerizing swirl of snowflakes in the sky when a magnificent palanquin appears in Old Temple Lane. The palanquin is borne on the shoulders of eight men, proceeding slowly over the cobbles, and a scaly dragon, sinuous and fierce, roars on the side. The insignia of imperial affairs. The bearers lower the carriage at the gates of the Hummingbird Inn. A pale hand from within parts the velvet curtains, and my heart misses a beat as I intuit that my fate is about to emerge.

The winter garden is chilly. Snow flutters to the ground. You stand by the stone circular well in robes of deepest purple, the wide-cuffed sleeves hanging to your knees, and the sight of you stalls my breath. Majestic and imposing, you have come a long way since the days of Bitter Root. Beneath the low black turban wound around your head, you are handsome, your eyes darting and quick. Your skin begs comparison to porcelain or milk, but you are nothing like the Eunuch Talent, who was effeminate and slight. You are manly enough to make the palace ladies whisper and regret Eunuch Loyal One can’t be seduced. You are your mother’s son. You have the Sorceress Wu’s hump-backed nose and, beneath your composure, I sense the fighting spirit of the Wu clan, strong and indomitable within.

Fearing you would grow impatient with waiting and leave, I rush down to meet you without changing my cicada-wing lace nightgown or combing my messy hair. I look as though called away from a gentleman caller, and I blush with shame.

‘Night Coming,’ you say, ‘at long last we meet.’

Your speech is as commanding as your presence. How can you be so steady on your feet? How can your heart not be vaulting up in the air? I bow to you, long and deep with respect.

‘Eunuch Loyal One,’ I say, ‘I am honoured that you have come to meet me.’

You smile and wrinkles spread out from the edges of your eyes. You are not yet thirty but, like most neuters who lack the yang essence, are beset by premature ageing. ‘How are the Sorceress Wu and Brother Coming? How do the Runts fare these days?’

‘They fare well, Eunuch Loyal One.’

Then I tell you how the sorceress sold me to the Huangs of Goatherd Valley to be slaughtered as a Spirit Bride. You shake your head with a weary sigh. ‘The wickedness of the Sorceress Wu never ceases to appal.’

I nod, and loath to waste more time on the atrocious Wu clan say, ‘Eunuch Loyal One, did you read the letters I sent?’

Snow whirls into the courtyard, settling on the bare branches of the cherry tree. You blink as a snowflake catches in your eyelashes. ‘Forgive me, Night Coming,’ you say. ‘As head of the Department of Housekeeping, I have many duties and responsibilities. I have not had time to read your letters.’

I recall the hours spent composing the letters with the old sage in the calligraphy shop, and I lower my eyes, bewildered and hurt. You clear your throat. ‘Allow me to speak frankly, Night Coming,’ you say. ‘I won’t insult your intelligence with less than the truth. I have no paternal feelings for you. Fatherhood is the fate of other men. To be a eunuch and serve the Emperor is mine.’

You speak as though there is truth and integrity in what you say. But you are denying paternity of me. Where’s the truth in that?

‘Fatherhood is your fate!’ I protest. ‘You are my father. I am your daughter. How can you deny the fact of me?’

Disagreement shows in your eyes, but you are calm. ‘You misunderstand me, Night Coming. Of course I accept that we are related. But I can’t be your father. I will never love you as a father loves a daughter. I have neither the time nor inclination. My life is devoted to serving our Son of Heaven, the Emperor Taizong.’

Your dark eyes shining with emperor-worship, you tell me how honoured you are to serve His Majesty. You tell me how His wisdom and judiciousness make Him the greatest emperor the Celestial Kingdom has ever known. You tell me how proud you are that He who loathes sycophants and flatterers has chosen you as His confidant. Your love of the Emperor crowds your heart. Crowding out your only child.

‘I admire you, Night Coming,’ you say, ‘for coming to Chang’an with nothing more than your quick wits and tale-spinning skills and becoming a renowned courtesan. But the Imperial Palace and the Gay Quarters are two worlds that ought not to collide. .’

You summon forth a manservant, lurking in the gateway, carrying a wooden chest. The chest is lowered on the stone table and the lid unlocked with a key. Under the lid are rows of silver coins. A fortune. Enough to feed, clothe and shelter me for the rest of my life.

‘One thousand tael,’ you say. ‘My gift to you.’

I am speechless. You misinterpret my shock for joy and are pleased. ‘And from you, Night Coming, I beg a small favour in return. I beg of you to be silent about the fact you are my daughter.’ You are disowning me. I reel as though slapped. ‘You are ashamed that a prostitute of the Gay Quarters is your daughter?’ I ask.

You clear your throat again, the wide cuff of your sleeve hanging down as you cough into your fist. ‘I am head of the Department of Housekeeping in the Imperial Palace. The tale of Bitter Root and Brother Coming is injurious to my reputation. Bitter Root was a feral beast, and I am grateful to the Sorceress Wu for. . severing me from him. She freed me from the libidinous throbs and urges of men and purified me for the higher purpose of serving the Emperor.’

Your calm and reasonable manner is infuriating. I would prefer your honesty. A sneer. A nose wrinkling of disgust as you sling me out, like night soil from a chamber pot.

‘Tell me,’ I say bitterly. ‘Does the Emperor repay your sycophantic and fawning love of him with love in kind?’

Annoyance flashes in your eyes. Then you regain composure with a condescending smile. ‘My love for Emperor Taizong is not a possessive love that demands love in return. My love of the Son of Heaven transcends this ordinary, selfish love. But this is more than I can expect a simple girl from Blacktooth County to understand. .’

Snow is tumbling out of the sky. The crystals of ice melt against my cicada-wing lace gown and my skin, heated by the tempest in my heart. I am trembling, but not with cold. ‘Very well, Eunuch Loyal One,’ I say. ‘I will never speak of Bitter Root again. You have my word. But I don’t want your money. Please take the silver when you leave.’

You are relieved. Now the embarrassing chore of severing ties with your illegitimate child has been taken care of, you are eager to return to the imperial household.

‘Farewell, Night Coming,’ you say.

You nod at the manservant and you both proceed to the gate, leaving the chest of silver behind. Insulted, I am about to shout after you, when a fierce and sudden wind gusts the snow sideways. A cackle of laughter, borne by the Daemons of Wind from over a thousand leagues away, startles both of us. You stiffen and pall. A primal fear creeps into your eyes.

‘Wretched she-brat,’ the sorceress laughs. ‘Are you going to let him get away with treating you like dirt?’

A gust of wind directs my gaze to the leather pouch on the belt of your robe, containing the silver trinket box of your embalmed genitals. I run over and snatch the pouch, and to my delight it comes away in my hand. Aghast, you lunge to grab it back, but I skip away, giggling. I swing the leather pouch by the drawstring in front of you, as though tormenting a starving cat with a dead mouse dangled by its tail.

‘You’ll rot in Hell without these,’ I laugh. ‘The Gatekeepers of the Otherworld will turn you away if you don’t have your precious jewels!’

You turn pale with superstitious fear. I giggle again, giddy to have the upper hand.

‘Brother Coming,’ you shout, ‘return those to me at once!’

‘I am not Brother Coming!’

Offended to be confused with the imbecile Brother Coming, I dash over to the stone well and swing the leather pouch over the dark hole. My fingers are numb and stiffened with cold, and though I do not intend it, the drawstring slips out of their grasp. There’s a moment of silent descent. Then, splash. I throw my hands over my shocked mouth. Snowflakes eddy and spin into the dark hole. You are horror-stricken. You run and leap up on to the circular stone ledge. You perch there like a bird in purple robes, peering into the depths.

‘Master!’ shrieks your manservant. ‘Master, wait! Let me fetch a slave to go down for you.’

You ignore him. Your manservant dashes into Old Temple Lane, calling for the palanquin bearers. There are hand- and footholds on the inner wall that Well-dredger Wang uses to climb down, to scoop out branches and drowned birds with his net. But in midwinter the inner walls are slippery with ice, and to go down is to risk life and limb. Determined to recover your precious jewels, however, you position your foot into a foothold and begin to descend. I say nothing. I gloat at the sight of you demeaning yourself.

A count of three is all it takes before you lose your footing. A scream. A swish of robes cuts from imperial cloth. Splash. I lean over the well’s stone wall and peer into the dark abyss.

‘Eunuch Loyal One?’ I call. ‘Bitter Root?’

I stare into the silence and fathomless dark. The Daemons of Wind moan, and once again I hear a loud and malicious cackling, borne across the Middle Kingdom from a mud-walled dwelling, a thousand leagues away.

XI

I was charged with manslaughter and sentenced to a life of exile in a Daoist nunnery on the Flowery Mountain, where I lived for another twenty-nine years, to the ripe old age of forty-five.

Twenty-nine years of celibacy, prayer and silent meditation. Twenty-nine years of singing scriptures and shaving my head. The older nuns taught me to read and write, and I worked in the nunnery’s silk farm, where I acquired some skills other than the performing act of Cloud and Rain. Every day I fed the silkworms leaves plucked from the mulberry bushes. Every day I watched them grow fat and spin silken thread for me to harvest and sell in Chang’an.

For the rest of my life I was wracked with guilt over your death. During the first eighteen years in the nunnery I was completely silent in repentance. Then I grew old, lost some teeth, and warts and hairs bristled on my chin. I became a wrinkled old crone. When my fingers became too arthritic for spinning silk, I sat on a tree stump near the nunnery, on a path up to the holy mountain peak. I started to speak again, and tell of my past. I accosted travellers and pilgrims, inviting them to come and rest a while and listen to my stories. The Tale-spinning Nun, I came to be known as. A legend of the Flowery Mountain. There is reference to the Tale-spinning Nun in the Tang Dynasty records in the national archives. Go and look me up.

I died while pruning the mulberry bushes on a rainy afternoon in the twenty-eighth year of the Gaozong reign. Many wept. But, to be honest, I was rather relieved.