River of Stars Read online

  His protégé, his friend, was smiling—as always, it seemed—as he walked up behind the girl in blue. He was on his way, escorted by guards, to what was meant to be his death.

  A lesson here, a bitter poem: you could enjoy the unexpected arrival of a young girl on a spring morning, but you couldn’t hide from heartbreak behind her slender form.

  Chen had lost weight, he saw. Not surprising, in his present circumstances. A brown hemp traveller’s robe hung loosely upon him. His manner, though, as he approached the gazebo and bowed, was as it always was: genial, open, pleased by the world, ready to be engaged or amused by it. You would never know by looking at the man that he was as profound a thinker as the world had today, the acknowledged master poet of their age. Celebrated as belonging with the giants of the Third and Ninth.

  He also shared, Wengao knew, some of those earlier poets’ legendary appreciation for good wine (or less-than-good wine, when occasion required).

  Wengao stood up again, so did Lin Kuo, very quickly. For his own mild amusement, he had not alerted the court gentleman that there was another guest arriving, and obviously not who it was.

  But every man with a connection to the literary or the political world knew Lu Chen—and his current fate. He wondered for a moment if the daughter would, then he saw the expression on her face.

  He felt a flicker of envy, like a long tongue from an old fire. She hadn’t looked at him that way. But he was old, really old. Could barely stand from a chair without wincing. Chen wasn’t a young man—his hair under the black felt hat and his narrow, neat beard were both greying—but he didn’t have knees that made walking an ambitious exercise. He was straight-backed, still a handsome man, if thinner-faced than he ought to be, and seeming tired now, if you knew him and looked closely.

  And he was the man who had written “Lines On the Cold Food Festival” and the “Red Cliff” poems, among others.

  Wengao was properly (if judiciously) proud of his own poetry over the years, but he was also a good reader and a sound judge, and he knew whose lines deserved to be remembered. Who deserved the look a young girl offered now.

  “You are drinking tea, my dear friend?” Chen exclaimed, in mock dismay. “I was relying on your spiced wine!”

  “It will be brought for you,” Wengao replied gravely. “My doctors have advised that tea will serve me better at this hour of the day. I sometimes pretend to heed them.” He glanced briefly at his girl. She nodded, and headed back towards the house.

  “Probably serve me better too.” Chen laughed. He turned. “I believe this is Court Gentleman Lin Kuo? Your late wife was a distant kinswoman of mine.”

  “She was, honourable sir. You are gracious to recall it and to know me.”

  “Hardly so!” Chen laughed again. “They were the better family in Szechen. We were the poor-but-earnest scholars in training.”

  Not true about his family, Wengao knew, but typical of Chen. He made the other introduction himself.

  “And here is Miss Lin Shan, daughter of Master Lin and his late wife. He has brought her to see the peonies.”

  “As well he should,” said Chen. “The splendour of the flowers needs no further adornment, but we cannot have too much of beauty.”

  The father looked amusingly happy. The daughter ...

  “You are too kind, Master Lu. It counts as a poet’s lie to suggest I have any beauty to add to Yenling in springtime.”

  Chen’s smile became radiant, his delight manifestly unfeigned. “So you think poets are liars, Miss Lin?”

  “I believe we have to be. Life and history must be adapted to the needs of our verses and songs. A poem is not a chronicle like a historian’s.” She looked at Xi Wengao with that last, and allowed herself—for the first time—a shy smile.

  We. Our.

  Wengao looked at her. He was wishing, again, that he was younger. He could remember being younger. His knees ached. So did his back, standing. He moved to sit again, carefully.

  Lu Chen strode to the chair and helped the older man. He made it seem a gesture of respect, courtesy to a mentor, not a response to need. Wengao smiled up at him and gestured for the other two men to sit. There were only three chairs, he hadn’t known the girl was coming.

  The girl was astonishing.

  He asked, because he couldn’t help himself, though it was too quick, “Old friend, how much time do we have with you?”

  Chen didn’t let his smile fade at all. “Ah! That depends on how good the wine proves to be when it arrives.”

  Wengao shook his head. “Tell me.”

  There were no secrets here. The two Lins would know—everyone knew—that Chen had been banished to Lingzhou Isle. It was said that the deputy prime minister, Kai Zhen—a man Wengao despised—was in charge of these matters now, as the prime minister aged.

  Wengao had heard it said there were a dozen kinds of spiders and snakes on Lingzhou that could kill you, and that the evening wind carried disease. There were tigers.

  Chen said quietly, “I imagine I can stay one or two nights. There are four guards accompanying me, but as long as I mostly keep moving south, and offer them food and wine, I believe I’ll be permitted some stops to visit friends.”

  “And your brother?”

  The younger brother, also a jinshi scholar, had also been exiled (families seldom escaped), but not so far, not to where he’d be expected to die.

  “Chao’s with his family at the farm by the Great River. I’ll go that way. My wife is with them, and will stay. We have land, he can farm it. They may eat chestnuts some winters but ...”

  He left the thought unfinished. Lu Chao, the younger brother, had a wife and six children. He had passed the examinations startlingly young, ranked third in the year his older brother was first. Had received the honours that came with that, held very high office, served twice as an emissary to the Xiaolu in the north.

  He had also remonstrated steadily, speaking out at court and in written memoranda against the New Policies of Hang Dejin, arguing carefully and well, with passion.

  You paid a price for that. Dissent and opposition were no longer acceptable. But the younger brother wasn’t the poet and thinker who had shaped the intellectual climate of their day. So he had been exiled, yes, but would be permitted to try to survive. Like Wengao himself, here in his own garden in his own city. Undoubtedly, Kai Zhen would congratulate himself on being a compassionate man, a judicious servant of the emperor, attentive to the teachings of the Masters.

  Sometimes it was difficult to escape bitterness. They were living, Wengao thought, schooling his features, in a terrible time.

  His guest said, changing the mood, turning to the girl, “As to poets and lies, you may be right, Miss Lin, but would you not agree that even if we alter details we may aspire to deeper truth, not only offer falsehoods?”

  She flushed again, so directly addressed. She held her head high, though. She was the only one standing, again behind her father’s chair. She said, “Some poets, perhaps. But tell me, what man has written verses about courtesans or palace women happy in themselves, not wasting away or shedding tears on balconies in sorrow for vanished lovers? Does anyone think this is the only truth for their lives?”

  Lu Chen thought about it, giving her his full attention. “Does that mean it is not a truth at all? If someone writes of a particular woman, must he intend her to stand for every single one?”

  His voice in debate was as remembered, crisp and emphatic. Delighted to be engaged, even by a girl. Thrust and counter-thrust, as with a sword. No one at court knew how to use a sword any more. Kitai had changed; men had changed. This was a woman debating with Chen, however. You had to remind yourself it was a girl, listening to her.

  She said, “But if only the one tale is told, over and over, no others at all, what will readers decide is true?” She hesitated, and Wengao caught what must—really?—be mischief in her eyes. “If a great poet tells us he is at the Red Cliff of a legendary battle, and he is, in fact, fifty
or a hundred li upriver, what will travellers in a later day think when they come to that place?”

  She lowered her gaze and clasped her hands demurely.

  Wengao burst out laughing. He clapped in approval, rocking back and forth. It was well known that Lu Chen had indeed mistaken where he was, boating on the Great River with friends on a full moon night. He’d decided he and his companions had drifted under the cliffs of the famous Third Dynasty battle ... and he’d been wrong.

  Chen was grinning at the girl. He was a man who could be moved to passionate fury, but not by a conversation such as this. Here, playing with words and thoughts, he was in his element, and joyous. You could almost forget where he was going.

  One or two nights he’d said he could stay.

  Chen turned to the father, who was also smiling, though cautiously. Lin Kuo would be ready to beat a retreat. But Chen bowed to him, and said, “I honour the father of such a daughter. You will be careful in how she is wed, Court Gentleman?”

  “I have been, I believe,” the other man said. “She is betrothed to Qi Wai, the son of Qi Lao. They will be wed after the New Year.”

  “The Qi family? The imperial clan? What degree of relationship?”

  “Sixth degree. So it is all right,” said the father.

  Within five degrees of kinship to the emperor, imperial clan members could marry only with permission of the court office in charge of them. Outside that degree, they led a more normal life, though could never hold office, or take the examinations, and they were all required to live in the clan compound in Hanjin beside the palace.

  Imperial kin had always been a problem for emperors, especially those not entirely secure on the Dragon Throne. Once, the nearer males in line might have been killed (many times they had been, in wide, bloody reapings), but Twelfth Dynasty Kitai prided itself on being civilized.

  Of course it did, Wengao thought, looking at his friend. These days the clan was simply locked away from the world, each of them given a monthly stipend, dowries for the women, the cost of burial rites—all of which was a serious budgetary concern, because there were so many of them now.

  “Qi Wai?” he said. “I don’t know him. I believe I have met the father. The son is an intelligent man, may I hope?”

  “He is a young historian, a collector of antiquities.”

  It was the girl, speaking up for herself, for her husband-to-be. This was inappropriate, of course. Xi Wengao had already decided he didn’t care. He was a little in love. He wanted her to speak.

  “That sounds promising,” said Chen.

  “I would not inflict my unruly daughter on a man I felt incapable of accepting her nature,” the father said. “I beg forgiveness for her impertinence.” Again, despite the words, you could hear pride.

  “As well you should!” cried Lu Chen. “She has just reminded me of one of my most grievous errors in verse!”

  A short silence, as the father tried to decide if Chen was truly offended.

  “The poems are wonderful,” the girl said, eyes downcast again. “I have them committed to memory.”

  Chen grinned at her. “And thus, so easily, I am assuaged. Men,” he added, “are too readily placated by a clever woman.”

  “Women,” she murmured, “have too little choice but to placate.”

  They heard a sound. None of them had seen the servant approaching again in her blue silk. Xi Wengao knew this girl very well (she spent some nights warming him). She wasn’t happy just now. That, too, was predictable, if unacceptable.

  The wine would be good. His people knew which wines to offer guests, and Lu Chen was known to be his favourite.

  Wengao and the girl (of course) had tea. Lin Kuo joined Chen in drinking the spiced wine, doing it as a courtesy to the poet, Wengao decided. Food was brought. They lingered in morning light, listening to birdsong in his garden, in a gazebo decorated with paintings by San Tsai, done in a style of long ago.

  SHE IS AWARE that the servant girl from the garden this morning doesn’t like her, though a servant (even a favoured one) ought not to let that show.

  The girl probably thinks she isn’t revealing it, Shan decides. But there are ways for a servant to stand, or respond just a little slowly to requests or orders. There are even ways of unpacking a guest’s belongings in the chamber offered her for the night, and messages can be read in such things.

  She is used to this. For some time it has been true of almost every woman she meets, of whatever rank or status. Men tend to be made uneasy, or sometimes amused, by Shan. Women dislike her.

  It is not at all certain, to this point in her life, if her father has really given her a gift with how he’s chosen to educate her.

  Some gifts are complex, she has long ago decided. Small things can change a life, a poet had written, and that is true, but the equally obvious truth is that large things can do the same. Her brother’s death had been a large thing, in their family if not in the world.

  In the years that followed it, the only other child, the thin, clever daughter, had received, slowly at first, as an experiment—the way an Arcane Path alchemist might gradually heat liquid in a flask—and then more decisively, the education a boy was offered if he intended to try for the jinshi examinations and a civil servant’s robe.

  She wasn’t, of course, going to write any examinations, or wear robes with the belt of any rank at all, but her father had given her the learning to do so. And he had made her perfect her writing skills and the brush strokes of her calligraphy.

  The songs, the ci, she had discovered on her own.

  By now, her brush strokes are more confident than his. If it is true, as some said and wrote, that the innermost nature of a person shows in their calligraphy, then her father’s caution and diffidence are there to be seen in his neat, straight, formal hand. Only when he’d travelled and written letters home in a running hand (no one but Shan and her mother had ever seen that hand) did his passion for life show through. From the world Lin Kuo hides this, in his writing, in his lanky, agreeable, slightly stooped form.

  Her own hand, in both formal and running scripts, is bolder, stronger. Too much so for a woman, she knows. Everything about her life is like that.

  The servant has withdrawn at her command, again just a little too slowly. And she’s left the door not quite fully closed on the dark corridor. Shan thinks of calling her back, but doesn’t.

  The room is at the back of the house, nearest the garden. Master Xi’s home is too deliberately modest to have a separate wing for women, let alone a building, but the men are at the front. She isn’t sure if their host and the poet have gone to bed. Her father has. Father and daughter had withdrawn from the dining room together, to leave the two old friends time alone by lamplight, with wine. It wasn’t an action that needed to be discussed. So much sadness here, Shan thinks, however much Xi Wengao has tried to hide it.

  There are noises in the garden at night. A flap of wings, cry of an owl, crickets, wind in leaves, wind chimes, faintly. Shan sees that their host has left two books for her in the room. A lamp with a long wick is lit to read by if she wants. One text is a scroll, the other a printed book, beautifully stitched binding. There is a desk, a single chair. The bed is large, curtained, a curved blue ceramic pillow with a painting of white plum blossoms.

  Master Xi is old enough to simply enjoy what she is, not be disturbed by it. He appears to find her learning amusing. Not necessarily the response she wants. But she is seventeen, and a girl. What response did one expect?

  Perhaps, inwardly—not for speaking aloud—what she really wants is for the songs, the ci she labours to craft, to be read or heard, and considered for their merits—or lack of them. She isn’t vain, she knows how much she doesn’t know yet.

  Lu Chen had said at dinner that he’d like to hear them sung.

  He is, in many ways, the master of all men of their day, the poets and thinkers, at any rate. Yet he smiled easily, laughed with abandonment, jesting through the meal, pulling the three of t
hem in that direction, scattering toasts (even to her!) from a steadily refilled wine cup. Forcing the mood towards lightness. Towards it, but not really arriving there.

  He is going to Lingzhou Isle. The expectation is that he will die. That is what happens there. There is a weight of pain, almost of panic inside Shan when she thinks about it. And something else she can’t identify. Bereavement? The bitter wine of loss-to-come? She feels a strangeness, almost wants to weep.

  Men broke willow twigs when parting from friends, a gesture of farewell, entreating heaven for a return. But could you break a twig for someone going where Lu Chen was going? With so many rivers and mountains between?

  She had been too bold in those first moments this morning. She knows it, knew it as she spoke. She’d felt awed by his arrival, overwhelmed—but fiercely determined not to yield to that or show it. Sometimes, Shan is aware, she feels so strong a need to be seen and heard that she forces an encounter, declaring her presence.

  Look at me! she can hear herself crying. And no one wants to be ordered to do that.

  In a way, she is too much the opposite of her father, who stands among others as if ready to take a step backwards, saying with his posture, his clasped hands, I am not even here if you don’t wish me to be.

  She loves him, honours him, wants to protect him, wants him to be properly seen as well, even if he is happier withdrawing towards shadows. There are only the two of them in the world. Until she weds and leaves the house.

  It is too easy to dismiss Lin Kuo, his daughter thinks for the hundredth time or more. Even his small book on the gardens here, presented to Master Xi today. Of course it isn’t an important work, but it is carefully, wittily done, offers observations that might last: a portrait in words of Yenling, a part of it, in these years of the dynasty under Emperor Wenzong, may he reign a thousand years upon the Dragon Throne.

  It is called the Dragon Throne again. She must be tired, or overtired, her thoughts are drifting. Shan knows why it has that name once more. She has learned such things because of her father. They are there for her, in her mind. Can you unlearn? Go back to being something else? A girl like all the others?