The Mandate of Heaven Read online

  ‘What do you know about rites?’ jeered Hsiung.

  ‘My father is a scholar of high purpose,’ replied Teng, loftily. ‘We Dengs know all about things like that.’

  Hsiung fell silent, abashed by his friend’s confidence. Teng’s forehead furrowed. Yun Shu wondered what he would do. Then Teng chanted an ancient poem composed by Emperor Wu – one of a great many taught to him by his father – and scattered leaves and pink blossom over the bones:

  Autumn wind rises,

  Plump clouds burn,

  Pine, bamboo, plum tree wither,

  Geese fly south and north.

  Yun Shu picked up the words. Her high, solemn voice joined Teng’s while Hsiung watched, grinning. Wind made the bamboo groves on Monkey Hat Hill whisper and nod as though in approval. In the distance, snow-capped mountains glimmered.

  Everything was quickening on Monkey Hat Hill that day: sprays of bamboo, the feathers of young birds, water bubbling and trickling over stony streambeds. Yun Shu’s fate, too, rushed towards her.

  Late in the afternoon she returned from the watchtower to find a slender figure in the doorway of her bedchamber.

  ‘Golden Lotus!’ she gasped, breathless from running. ‘You’re back early.’

  Whether by accident or design she did not kneel or even bow. His plucked, crescent-moon eyebrows rose a little.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  Gripped by sudden defiance, Yun Shu replied: ‘I ran to the cliff and looked out across the lake and over the rooftops of the city. I saw mountains where the holy men live and I looked right across the lake, right across!’

  They regarded one another.

  ‘A lady never runs,’ said Golden Lotus, suspiciously. ‘That’s what servants are for. Come with me.’

  Salt Minister Gui’s mansion had many unused rooms and corridors. Golden Lotus led her to a part of the house rarely visited except by rats and beetles. Here the chambers were thick with cobwebs and dust, lacking furniture or purpose.

  One room in the centre of this maze had been transformed, its floor swept and walls washed. Two chairs had been set up, as well as a footstool and low table. On the latter sat a plain wooden box. A large bowl of clean water stood against one wall. On the opposite side was another bowl. Yun Shu detected a liverish, metallic odour in the room.

  ‘Sit down,’ commanded Golden Lotus, indicating the taller of the two chairs. ‘Take off your shoes.’

  ‘Please!’ she cried. ‘I promise not to tell Father if you pretend it didn’t work!’

  Golden Lotus shuffled over so his painted mouth was inches from her face. She trembled before his unflinching stare.

  ‘I shall not pretend,’ he said, forcing her onto the chair. When she tried to rise he slapped her face. ‘And it will work!’ he added.

  Yun Shu hugged herself, tears running down her cheeks.

  ‘I’ll run away!’ she cried.

  ‘If you do I’ll have you beaten and starved. And I’ll make your lotus feet three inches long, not four!’

  She subsided at this prospect.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said, ‘now sit still.’

  Golden Lotus carried over the basin. The girl recoiled from its shiny, crimson surface. It was full of blood and herbs.

  ‘Lift your feet. Lower them in gently.’

  ‘But it’s blood!’

  ‘Of course, stupid girl! It will protect you from sickness. See how I take care of you.’

  He knelt and forced her feet to soak in the concoction. Meanwhile, he fussed over an endless bandage. The liquid tickled at first but, after a while, the girl’s heartbeat slowed: this was not so bad. He bent over the box and produced a tiny razor. Her terror returned. Did he mean to cut off her toes?

  ‘Your left foot,’ he commanded, ‘then your right.’

  Once the nails had been pared to the quick, he instructed Yun Shu to soak her feet again. They sat in silence. All the words never spoken or shared between them filled the bare room with loss. Her heart beat so fast she found it hard to breathe.

  ‘Do you know how old I was when my feet were bound?’ asked Golden Lotus.

  Yun Shu did, though she knew little else about Father’s flawless male-concubine. He often boasted that he had never cried or complained when his own feet were bound by the brothel keeper who bought him from his parents.

  ‘You were seven,’ whispered the girl.

  ‘Yes, and that is a good age. Bones are soft then. There’s less pain. But you are ten years old.’

  Yun Shu waited. Surely some awful conclusion was coming.

  ‘So, Youngest Daughter,’ said Golden Lotus, ‘don’t curse me if it hurts. It will and it must. It should hurt. That way, on your wedding day, your new family will measure your four inch lotuses with a ruler and know you are a strong, obedient girl.’

  ‘No!’ cried Yun Shu, upsetting the bowl of pig’s blood. Some spilt over the floor, spreading out thick, glistening red fingers.

  She was silenced by another slap across the cheek.

  ‘Stupid girl!’ hissed Golden Lotus.

  First the bandage, wide as her wrist and twenty feet long. Golden Lotus placed the end on Yun Shu’s instep, still sticky with pig’s blood, and ran it forwards, wrapping it round her toes. Then more tightly round the big toe. Only when the bandage was wrapped round her heel and the toes yanked down did Yun Shu cry out. Golden Lotus frowned at this early sign of weakness.

  Now tighter round the ankle, tighter, pulling the toes down and back.

  ‘Stop it! Please!’ Yun Shu tried to rise. Struggle off the high chair. ‘Please!’

  Slap. Slap. ‘You are ungrateful,’ said Golden Lotus in his cold, singsong voice, all the while winding the bandage tighter. ‘I am showing you a true mother’s love. Unlike that ugly creature who gave birth to you. Her feet were as nasty as yours.’

  Yun Shu shrieked in reply.

  Slap. Slap.

  Golden Lotus wrapped all the way around once, twice, then three times. A hot burning pain shot up from Yun Shu’s foot, scalding every nerve in her body. Her backbone ached as though her entire self had lost its stem.

  The pain became a haze. For a moment she no longer suffered in this deserted chamber, her leg pinned to the footstool by Golden Lotus’s weight. She was skipping down the lanes of Monkey Hat Hill, bright birds singing and trilling all around, pink flowers turning towards her as she danced like a fragment of sun …

  Then Yun Shu was floating up the Hundred Stairs that wound through the bamboo woods to Cloud Abode Monastery. Up there, the Nuns of Serene Perfection were chanting and Yun Shu longed to join them, melting into the woods and lake and distant mountains and music of birds … And she recognised a fearful truth, that her vision was a farewell, a dying, like being carried from this world to the Jade Emperor’s Cloud Terrace where Immortals live forever and ever …

  Agony split the vision open and she was back in the hated room, staring at pig’s blood soaking into the floor while Golden Lotus’s needle and thread worked busily, ensuring she could not loosen the bandages. Then it was time for her right foot. After that would come a stern command to walk, walk until the bones of her feet strained and bent like masts in a terrible storm, by some miracle not yet breaking.

  Two

  Hsiung lay awake on his blanket winnowing angry thoughts.

  Yesterday he and Teng had returned to the watchtower after roaming Monkey Hat Hill, free as shadows, swishing bamboo swords like xia of old. Hsiung had gone in first and called out an all clear. When Teng followed he found the ground disturbed. Some of the bones they had buried so carefully dug up. ‘Foxes or wild dogs,’ muttered Hsiung, ‘told you so.’

  The boys had lounged on thrones of fallen masonry, chewing liquorice roots, pretending not to be afraid that the animals would return.

  ‘I discovered this place on the anniversary of Mother’s death,’ Teng announced, suddenly.

  ‘Do you remember her?’ asked Hsiung, sullenly tapping a skull with his thick, bambo
o sword.

  ‘Not much. Father says she was beautiful and noble.’ He sighed. ‘Truly, we Dengs are the most tragic family in Hou-ming Province. At least, that’s what Lady Lu Si says. Father is compiling a history of our ancestors, you know.’

  Hsiung threw a stone over the cliff edge.

  ‘I know nothing about my parents,’ he said, ‘not even my family name.’ The servant boy leaned forward. ‘I bet my ancestors were as good as yours!’

  Teng smiled at such an outlandish notion. ‘Unlikely.’

  ‘Is it?’ pressed Hsiung. ‘People take out lucky charms whenever you or your father pass by. They say you Dengs are cursed.’

  ‘Common rabble! Traitors!’

  ‘My ancestors are as good as yours,’ maintained Hsiung, less certainly.

  ‘You mean were as good. Well, I know better!’

  Possessed by some demon that lived in the old watchtower, Hsiung leaned over and grabbed Teng’s throat. ‘What do you know about my parents? What do you know?’

  ‘I … Let go!’

  ‘Your father told you something, didn’t he?’

  ‘Y-you’re choking m-me!’

  Abruptly Hsiung had relaxed his grip. Stalking from the watchtower, he left Teng rubbing his bruised throat, gasping for air.

  In the hour before daybreak birds sang in ones or twos. Hsiung dozed on his blanket, digesting grievances. Only the sound of mice in the eaves and his soft breathing disturbed the room.

  Perhaps the birds were noisy that summer dawn. Perhaps that was why he rose earlier than usual. The fact he did, Hsiung later realised, changed the course of his life.

  Soon he was blowing on wood chips until embers glowed and the kindling took flame. Hsiung took pride in his work, he was good at fires. Then he wandered out to the well where the winch creaked as he hauled up a bucket of cloudy water. After a while it would clear, the fine mud and sand settling. Yet if he shook or agitated the bucket it became cloudy again.

  Hsiung remembered yesterday’s quarrel with a pang of guilt. It was all Teng’s fault. Anyone would have got angry after hearing his ancestors insulted.

  He watched the bucket clear then kicked it, reviving the white clouds of swirling sediment. Was Teng a friend anyway? True, he rarely put on airs, but he was still his master’s son. Sometimes, when Hsiung bullied Teng into helping with the chores, he knew it was to punish him for being of higher birth.

  Yet after their quarrel in the watchtower, Teng had tried to make peace, explaining excitedly that a hungry ghost had temporarily seized control of Hsiung’s two souls, his hun and po, and that the ruin was a dangerous, cursed place.

  Hsiung still suspected Teng knew more than he was saying. Once, Deng Nan-shi had dropped a hint about a soldier – and an uncommonly valiant one – being his father. When pressed the thin-faced scholar’s reply had only deepened the mystery. ‘You’ll get your inheritance,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, see if Lady Lu Si needs help in the kitchen.’

  Hsiung shook the bucket less violently. Again clouds swirled. He wished Teng’s throat hadn’t been the one he’d grabbed. It occurred to him that once mud is poured into pure, bright water it can never be quite filtered out. If nothing else, a bitter taste remains.

  As he returned to the kitchen, Hsiung heard dragging feet, gasps of pain.

  ‘Yun Shu?’

  Her former bustle had gone. She dragged her plump body across the uneven ground of the courtyard with the aid of a fallen branch, wincing over each step.

  ‘What’s happened? Who did this?’

  Before she could answer, he understood. Her bare feet were stained with dried blood and purple-blue bruises. Shreds of grimy bandage hung loosely from her toes. A hot, baffled feeling took him. ‘Sit down! Here!’

  He helped her to the brick wall round the well. She was clutching a bag of clothes. Tears stained her cheeks, yet she did not cry as she told him about the room with the bandages. How she had used a knife to saw through the bindings. A troupe of monkeys arrived, scurrying across the rooftops. Their watchful, bobbing faces formed an audience. When Yun Shu finished, Hsiung frowned, unsure whether to wake Teng.

  ‘You must hide,’ he announced, more confidently than he felt.

  ‘But where?’ she asked. ‘Here?’

  Hsiung looked round. There was no shortage of empty rooms in Deng Mansions. She seemed to read his thought.

  ‘This is the first place they’ll look,’ she said.

  Hsiung nodded. ‘We must go somewhere they don’t know about. If you have the strength.’

  The Hundred Stairs leading up to Cloud Abode Monastery were steep. Especially burdened by a hollowed gourd of water and Yun Shu’s bundle, as well as her weight on his shoulder. Each step made her gasp and cling to his arm. Halfway up, he examined her.

  ‘Do you want to go back?’

  ‘No! Not until … No!’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘It will be easier in the woods,’ she said. ‘I want to go on.’

  Dawn had hardened into day when they entered the bamboo groves round Cloud Abode Monastery, following a barely discernible path. Yun Shu sobbed as she stumbled. The glinting waters of the lake showed through the trees and the ruined watchtower came into view.

  ‘Nearly there,’ urged Hsiung.

  She had no strength to reply. They reached the crawl-way into the tower and Hsiung peered at the sun. Old Deng Nan-shi and Lady Lu Si would be wondering where he was. Most likely the fire for Master’s tea would have gone out.

  ‘Yun Shu, I must go back. They’ll be suspicious.’

  ‘Don’t leave me!’

  ‘I’ll come back. You’re safe here. Your feet can mend here. When your father realises you’ll never surrender, he’ll …’ But Hsiung did not know what Salt Minister Gui would do. He felt the girl’s large brown eyes upon his back as he hurried away. When he turned to wave, she had vanished into the crawl-way.

  A little way further into the wood he paused. Was that Yun Shu’s voice calling? The cry sounded urgent. He could not tell whether it belonged to human or bird. Meanwhile the sun would not stop climbing. He descended the Hundred Stairs two at a time, for Hsiung knew Yun Shu’s father would find his way to Deng Mansions all too quickly.

  Morning passed in its usual way. Lady Lu Si pretended to sweep the entrance, occasionally staring into space and clutching the broom so tightly her knuckles whitened.

  Lady Lu Si had been the favourite concubine of Teng’s grandfather, Prefect Deng, when Hou-ming fell. Her survival that terrible day could be blamed on her exceptional beauty – or disloyal refusal to leap off the cliff with the other concubines. After the Mongols finished with her she was too broken in spirit to do more than curl into a ball. It said much about Deng Nan-shi’s forbearance that he allowed cowardly Lady Lu Si to stay in Deng Mansions as an honoured servant.

  The two boys were busy ignoring each other when she approached with her twig broom. Still graceful, she bowed respectfully to Teng.

  ‘You must help scrape the vegetables,’ she told Hsiung.

  An ugly flush crossed his sullen face. ‘Horses in the lanes!’ he cried. ‘Riders! They must be Mongols!’

  Lady Lu Si shrank back. Picked at her bony hands. The broom clattered to the floor. Her careworn mouth trembled. ‘I … I really must … I really must!’

  ‘Don’t be afraid, it’s all right,’ said Teng. ‘Hsiung’s just joking!’

  She had already fled into the house where she would hide all day, weeping and sighing, her only comfort an amulet given to her by the Nuns of Serene Perfection from the monastery up the hill.

  Hsiung pretended to whoop with delight. Before Teng could utter a reproach, he ran whooping and jeering into the lanes that led down Monkey Hat Hill to the old Ward Gate, and thence into the city.

  Deng Nan-shi ate his usual lunch: a small bowl of rice and vegetables. Today the hunchbacked scholar did not leave the house to teach the basics of writing and reading. His pupils were the sons of men who, before the Mongo
ls, would have grovelled to a Deng.

  Instead he searched through chests and boxes in the library for family documents. What he sought was apparently a great secret, for when Hsiung poked his head in upon his return from the city, the scholar hurriedly hid the scroll he was reading. This interested the boy, though he had never bothered to learn his characters and found the entire inky business tiresome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’

  Teng returned to the poem he was copying.