Fires blazed, embers glowed, and spicy fumes drifted from grilles and from kettles.
There were travelers and porters from the salt wells south of the Kin-Ling mountains. The latter worked their way to whatever space they could find. Each had to help another release his burden, for each was bent double by the enormous block of salt he carried; he could rest only by fixing a cross staff to his harness and leaning against it. And among the unburdened travelers, the Mongol shaman, still limping, made his way among the faster moving Chinese whose heads came little above his shoulders. Ju-hai, circulating through the crowd, followed him to an angle of a buttress of the village wall. He began, “So many things to tend to before I start out for the big city tomorrow, I can’t take time for a bit of food and wine with you.”
The Mongol wagged his head, grinned, and made an obscene gesture to indicate that Ju-hai would be engrossed with a woman.
“I see your leg is troubling you.”
“Not too much.”
“If you get drunk tonight, sleep by the wagons so you’ll wake up and ride with us. Eat with me on the road.” He handed the Mongol a piece of silver. “Just to make sure you don’t go to sleep sober.”
“No harm, once in a while,” Yatu conceded, “as long as you don’t make a habit of it” He made for the food-and-drink stand.
From the stumpy little tower near the gatehouse, a drum rolled, and its voice finally swelled into thunder. A gong clanged—the sound persisted, lingering, sighing, and whispering itself into silence. Light bearers circulated about to plant the staves of their torches. Hubbub took charge again. Drums again, gongs, flutes, and moon fiddles sounded, and lion dancers emerged from nowhere.
Each lion was of cloth, with an enormous head shaped of paper pulp and cloth, gaudily painted, gilded for good measure. Two mummers kept the beast pouncing about, rampant on his two feet, with his forepaws clawing; all the while, the two-man lion roared magnificently, darting about, climbing, bounding over the stage which awaited players and acrobats. And then, it all climaxed in a lion fight.
The shaman had a bowl of noodles and a moon-cake. The latter was large enough to fill the palm of the hand and was three fingers thick. The pastry shell contained the yolk of an egg, minced ham, minced fruits no barbarian had ever heard of, and minced odds and ends—everything but minced moonbeams. Among humans, all Chinese and an occasional barbarian could survive the eating of one or two moon-cakes. As for a Mongolian—he survived, being considered not human; however, a jug of shao-hsing did promote digestion.
Ju-hai caught all this in flashes as he hurried to the stairs leading to the pavilion which topped the gatehouse. Built two centuries ago by an ancestor, it was a miniaturized version of the gatehouse of Kaifeng, too pretentious for a farm village; but the original had impressed that ancestor. When an error endured sufficiently long, it became a hallowed tradition—as Lan-yin had become in her busy lifetime.
Ju-hai went to pay respects to his father and to bow to the handful of family guests. Already, he had permission to set up a three-leaf screen, well away from the visitors, where he and Hsi-feng could share their final hours.
Presently approaching by an inner stairway, she joined him, bringing a tray from the kitchen. Happy Springtime, another slave girl, came up with a brazier of glowing charcoal and a wine jug. She said to Ju-hai, “Old Master, I’ll have a fire made in your apartment.”
In their screened privacy, the lovers did their best to watch the folk play in which a divine messenger offered the Emperor the potion of Immortality. The Son of Heaven, setting the gift on the table, went with the messenger to the door. Chang Wo, an Imperial concubine, snatched and gulped the potion. Now an Immortal, she became Moon Goddess.
They watched and they plied their chopsticks; and Ju-hai groped, pursuing in circles those thoughts which were such depressing company. Before he could pass the examinations, Hsi-feng would be past the optimum age for marriage. The Old Man might get her married off, to make sure that having Hsi-feng on the brain wouldn’t interfere with Ju-hai’s studies. And if the Old Man did not do so, her parents might demand that he live up to the terms of the contract.
Kwan Village, being in a sheltering fold of the Tsin-ling Range, got early sunset shadows and darkness. Thus, the pageant was well under way when the most magnificent moon of the year came up, red-golden, like a brazen gong, rising from where the Kwei River joined the great Huang-Ho. The lovers stood silently for long moments; then, having seen wonder and beauty, they turned their backs on the festival.
Picking their way through the Kwan Family complex, a village within a walled village, going from moon patches to black shadows cast by the lacquered columns which supported the canopies over the walkways, they came finally to Ju-hai’s court, with miniature mountains, a pool with a bridge, and clumps of bamboo against whitewashed walls.
The wavering light of a single taper and the glow of charcoal reached from the apartment and into the deep shadow cast by the drum tower. “Our last night—” Ju-hai sighed, fumbled with the fine silver chain about her neck, and drew from the warm depths of her jacket the pectoral he had given her before their first breakfast together. He fingered the Phoenix and the endless knot. ‘This was for finding each other. Now—now it’s for rememberings. It will tell how I’ve always wanted you. If I could stay here and be a farmer, we’d marry—but it’s my family, my duty—”
She caught him in both arms with a cry, and words blurred into sobbing. “…Remembrance and good-bye—you would if you could—if they allowed you—Aiieeyah! The happier the rememberings, the more the grief!” She gasped. Her fingers sank into his shoulders. “O mi to fu! What’s that over there?”
Ju-hai twisted about. He saw what Hsi-feng saw—a spindle of luminescence forming instant by instant until, in the further gloom, a shapely woman became ever more solid seeming. Mei-yu had returned. He thrust Hsi-feng back and stood in front of her to face whatever the apparition brought him.
Smilingly, Mei-yu mocked him. “Foolish farm boy! Why worry so much about my jealousy? Little Phoenix, step out so I can talk to you. If you can’t get mind-words, he’ll tell you later—I’m awfully busy! Anyway, you nice silly lovers, I did better than have Lady Chang Wo build me a body—Hsi-feng, Little Phoenix, I borrowed your beautiful body, and it had everything. In the dark, Master Ju-hai thought I was as fascinating as he’s thought you were, ever since—Aiieeyah! So you do get thought direct?”
Whether she laughed aloud, or whether it was an unheard, spirit laugh, mind to mind, neither Ju-hai nor Hsi-feng could be sure. But it was friendly mockery, affectionate and whimsical. “Ju-hai, Ju-hai, don’t look so surprised—you, Little Phoenix, you’re entitled to your wonderings. How many times in all history has one male lout with one stroke taken the virginity of two women?”
The shape of moon-mist was thinning, but Mei-yu’s words were clear. “Thank you for the loan of that lovely body, and I wish you many a year of enjoying it as I did.”
Chapter VIII
Whenever Ju-hai got down to the yellowish alluvial flats of the Wei River valley, he would look up, and up, and further up, back at the snowcap of Tai Pai Shan, towering thirteen thousand five hundred feet above sea level, a ten-thousand-foot swoop from the network of irrigation canals to the peak which commanded the valley. Always, he would draw a deep breath and shake his head; and he was happy that he lived among the lower folds of the Tsin-ling, the tapering off of the tremendous Kun-lun which reached eastward out of Tibet and Turkistan. Long shadows moved northeast as the autumn days shortened.
Like his brother, Ju-hai rode a blocky, durable pony and carried a lance. At his saddle he had a cavalry bow, reflex curved, of horn and bamboo, the deadly weapon of the nomad horsemen from beyond the Great Wall. Some of the villagers, Chen Lao-yeh among them, tramped along, each with a donkey-drawn wagon or two,