The Mandate of Heaven (66 page)

The maid bowed and hurried off to inform the other servants that Master’s daughter, Abbess Yun Shu, was being violated by bloodthirsty bandits along with every other Nun in the city.

Golden Lotus was left standing beside the gatehouse of the Salt Minister’s compound, aware that he must decide whether to act – and soon.

His troubles had started shortly after dawn with a hysterical letter from Yun Shu, begging the Salt Minister to collect her from Cloud Abode Monastery without delay. Golden Lotus’s unstable feelings for her – sometimes angry, insulted, unforgiving, sometimes touched by reluctant respect – reached back to when he had been Gui’s beautiful, precious new consort, twenty-five years earlier. Then Yun Shu had been an irrelevance. Now she could not be dismissed lightly.

Should he respond at once? The whole city was in chaos apart from where Prince Arslan’s garrison controlled the Gates. If only he could pass the decision to dear Gui! Not that it would make much difference to poor, put upon Golden Lotus! Even if his husband-master hadn’t been away from Hou-ming, helping Prince Jebe Khoja supply and provision the Mongol forces, it was doubtful the Salt Minister would have helped.

Since his sons’ executions in faraway Dadu, Gui had grown odder than ever. For the first time his uncanny ability to drill and parade numbers deserted him. There were rumours of mistakes. One or two involved many thousands of
cash
. A newly acquired habit of reckless drinking was partly to blame.

Poor Golden Lotus suffered the consequences: sullen moods for days, rages, ever longer episodes where Gui quivered in his chair, muttering as though possessed by a demon.

Golden Lotus grieved for the time when he had been the Salt Minister’s most prized object – other than his sons’ advancement to high office, of course. Once, long ago, Golden Lotus had even attracted Jebe Khoja’s attention. A night better left unmentioned. In the intervening years Golden Lotus’s dainty, exotic beauty, poised between so many opposites – he was once hailed by a drunken connoisseur as the sublime midpoint between
yin
and
yang
– had coarsened and greyed. To his horror, he had acquired the faintest trace of a paunch.

Now he must decide: fetch Yun Shu from Cloud Abode Monastery as she requested, and thereby regain the possibility of installing some purpose into the Salt Minister’s life, or hide in the dubious safety of Prince Arslan’s palace.

He shuffled over to the entrance of the gatehouse and ordered the porter to open the doors. Beyond, Prince Arslan’s huge parade ground was deserted. A smell of burning tainted the air. Golden Lotus felt the entire world he had fought to win for himself would burn, too, unless he acted. He turned to the porter and clicked his fingers.

‘Fetch all the male servants! And both of Master’s palanquins. Quick! Quick!’

The old man scurried off as swiftly as his bandy legs would carry him. The entire household knew better than to cross Golden Lotus.

It was long past noon when he departed, seated in a curtained palanquin carried by four men. A second followed, borne by the same number of human mules. Golden Lotus intended that it would return with Yun Shu.

A small crowd had gathered at the gatehouse of Prince Arslan’s palace. Most were courtiers or servants alarmed by rumours of a rebel victory. At first the Captain of Guards refused to let them leave. But had not Prince Arslan himself allowed free passage to all who wished to depart from the city? Wearied of entreaties, the officer waved through the column of people clutching bags and precious possessions.

Soon Golden Lotus’s small cavalcade hurried through the streets of Hou-ming. Many were deserted: districts long ago fallen into ruin, home to groves of bamboo and half-collapsed wooden houses. Other areas were lined with anxious faces, hysterical crowds on street-corners.

Still the curtained palanquins jogged towards Monkey Hat Hill. For Golden Lotus, a bumpy, fearful journey. He dared not part the drapes to look round. He had spent so long locked away in Salt Minister Gui’s house, a treasure too precious to be sullied by the world’s eyes, that he recognised no landmarks and was helplessly lost.

The palanquins halted and Golden Lotus found himself surrounded by a fog of chanting, droning voices, tinkling bells and triumphant, blaring Tibetan rams’ horns. Parting the curtains a knuckle’s width, he saw a river of orange-clad devotees of the Lord Buddha spreading out at the foot of Monkey Hat Hill.

He recollected Pink Rose’s tale of Cloud Abode Monastery being handed from Daoist to Buddhist. Though his understanding of such matters was limited to buying amulets or spells, he comprehended the danger Yun Shu faced. This encouraged him. There would be no disobedience or backsliding from the ungrateful girl this time!

It was twenty years since Golden Lotus lived on Monkey Hat Hill with the youthful Gui. That broad-hipped creature, Gui’s wife, so adept at bearing children, had been dead by then. Golden Lotus had revelled in his triumph. And well he might. When no one was listening, Yun Shu’s mother often threatened to send him back to the Yellow Eel House for lotus-footed boys where Gui had discovered and bought him for the full asking price, enamoured by his feet and pretty, smiling face! Bought him as one might an exquisite hen partridge calling and cooing for a mate!

With a shock of clarity, Golden Lotus understood why he had offered to bind Yun Shu’s feet all those years ago, though really the girl was too old for such an ordeal. He had wanted to punish Gui’s dead wife for her taunts!

In a flurried motion, Golden Lotus pulled aside the curtain of the palanquin. He let out a screeched command and the palanquin halted. In the silence that followed he could hear the porters panting. It was late afternoon. The autumn light showed signs of thinning and a breeze set the trees of Monkey Hat Hill sighing. Golden Lotus looked round fearfully, as though the restless pines were warning him. After all, to restore Yun Shu would revive her mother, so long neglected and forgotten. For Gui needed the one thing Golden Lotus could never provide, the gift of heirs. A gift Yun Shu’s mother would offer again through her daughter. It would mean Gui’s hated First Wife had triumphed in the end.

Tears filled his eyes. How foolish he had been! How sentimental! He saw that Gui’s growing weakness, rather than being something to cure, was in fact his best hope. How else could he continue to please the Salt Minister now that his beauty had decayed into grey hairs dyed black, acrid aromas doused with musk, wrinkles concealed beneath ever-thicker make-up.

Golden Lotus rapped on the roof. ‘Turn round!’ he commanded in his shrillest voice. ‘Go back! Back to the Palace!’

For a moment the exhausted porters hesitated. Then they swung the palanquins round and headed straight back into the mob of exultant Buddhists claiming their prize of Cloud Abode Monastery.

In the hour before dusk, the Nuns of Serene Perfection and their servants gathered outside the Temple of Celestial Teachers. The mournful tolling of the monastery gong summoned them. Today it spoke of grief. For over four centuries it had summoned generations of Serene Ones to rites beneficial to the city they served.

To many of those waiting in the courtyard, the familiar, low echo triggered hopeless tears. Two women, however, stood impassively on the steps leading up to Chenghuang’s sanctuary in the Temple. They wore their finest robes decorated with symbols of magical power. Their carefully arranged ‘whirlwind clouds’ hair rose proudly, decorated with modest bone hairpieces shaped like the primordial egg of
yin
and
yang
.

They were, of course, Abbess Yun Shu and her deputy, Lady Lu Si. Despite her relative youth, the Abbess seemed to have aged over the last year and acquired a stern dignity that would have surprised many who had known her younger incarnations.

She did not show the least expression as Void led a group of porters and soldiers out of the monastery, bearing everything of value that hadn’t already been transferred to Golden Bright Temple. With them went a handful of Nuns, seeking to implore Worthy Master Jian for a renewed certificate of ordination. At their head walked Three Simplicities.

Those women who could not bend as nimbly to the times, trapped by loyalty to old ideals and modes, those who could not discard all they held dear to fit an unknown future demanded by strangers, were left to the gathering darkness. Yun Shu turned to Lady Lu Si.

‘Let us bid farewell to Chenghuang together,’ she said, ‘on behalf of the Nuns of Serene Perfection. But let us do it joyfully, lest He think we are not glad to have served Him so long.’

Lady Lu Si bowed. ‘With joy,’ she muttered. ‘I have meditated upon the matter and no longer believe He is angry with us.’

‘How glad I am,’ said Yun Shu, weeping silently. ‘Let us say farewell with pride and gratitude.’

So the two Serene Ones offered a final supplication to Chenghuang, ensuring the candles were renewed and burning bright when His new protectors entered the Temple of Celestial Masters. A place they would no doubt rename and improve according to their own notions, until someone else came along to replace them in their turn. They were all, Yun Shu told herself, merely inhalations and breathings out of eternity.

Yun Shu left the Temple and took up her rightful position at the head of the Nuns and their servants, the most notable being Bo-Bai, with their handcarts and bags of clothes, cooking pots and sacks of winter grain.

Following Three Simplicities’ example, Yun Shu did not look back as she stepped through the bronze doors of Cloud Abode Monastery for the last time and approached the Hundred Stairs. She found them lined with Buddhist monks chanting sutras. Many bore torches that countered the fading light. Though they might have been expected to crow and jeer, all watched in silence as the proud, handsome woman led her people down the steps through the bamboo woods, down Monkey Hat Hill and toward the City of Ghosts.

Another dark day had passed in Hou-ming if the ribbons of smoke were anything to go by. When she looked out across the lake, distant fires and stray flashes glowed.

‘That is the battle,’ murmured Bo-Bai. ‘It still seems to be going on.’

Yun Shu felt a deep revulsion and cried out defiantly: ‘The Dao that is bright seems dull! The great square has no corners! The Dao conceals itself in namelessness! The Dao breeds one; breeds two; breeds three; three breeds the Ten Thousand Creatures!’

Chanting and singing, the Nuns of Serene Perfection left the Hundred Stairs and halted at the entrance to the smoke-blackened remains of Deng Mansions.

‘Those who wish to stay with me shall rest here,’ said Yun Shu. ‘In the morning light everything will be clearer to us.’

Only a few of the servants and Nuns with family in the city departed. The rest, twenty-five strong, entered the broken gatehouse of Deng Mansions.

9
^th
Day, 9
^th
Month, 1322

The Ninth Day of the Ninth Month ended in mourning and defeat for the Nuns of Serene Perfection. It began with a nightmare for Hsiung.

He was back in the Buddha’s Caves, naked except for a sword. Behind him the looming image of the Buddha smiled down, at peace with the Infinite Breezes. But in Hsiung’s bitter heart there could be no peace, no release. As the first of his enemies entered the cave – a giant bearing Hornets’ Nest’s grinning head on bull-like shoulders – Hsiung almost threw away his sword rather than sully the Holy Buddha’s sanctuary with fresh blood, always more blood. The dream shifted and he was pounding the skull of a wild dog with a bamboo staff, its jaws fastened onto his leg. However hard he ground the bamboo into the bubbling gruel of its brain the creature would not die, would not release its hold …

‘Sire! Sire! It is dawn!’

Hsiung leapt to his feet, expecting to find a bamboo sword in his hand. There was only air.

‘Your Highness!’

It was his faithful ship’s captain, bowing fearfully. Hsiung followed the older man’s pointing finger across the placid waters of the lake.

‘What is this?’ demanded the Noble Count. ‘I have ordered no dawn attack.’