She tossed her head.
“Who are you to say that I should not understand?” she cried. “No facet of love can go unscanned for one who loves an Emperor and is loved by him.” Then, as suddenly swerving as a bird, her mood changed. “I will sing you a song.” She tuned her voice to the rhythm of the wheels.
She stopped singing and looked at him sideways.
Ah Lai said: “To your song about Winter Cherry I can only reply with a reminder that you, too, will grow old, and that your lover, the Emperor, has grown old already. Do you (since revenge is always brutal) take pleasure in the touch of a man so many years old? Do you (since you did not spare me pain) enjoy his lack-lustre eye, his hollow cheek? Do you (since we are alone here) find in his bed the rhythm of a dance and the laughter of a light moment in unnoticed sunshine? Do you . . . .”
She replied through her teeth: “Turn the carriage round.”
He shook the reins so that the horses went faster. “No,” he answered, “I cannot do that. I serve General Tung, and through him the Emperor. It is not my custom to take orders from a woman. Still, if what I have said is too offensively truthful, consider that only the wind has heard it.”
They drove without speaking further, until, on a hill, the horses slowed. Then, as if this broke her thought, she hummed gently the old interminable driving-song.
“There is a carriage coming towards us,” Ah Lai said. “I shall ask the driver the way.”
“Do so,” Kuei-fei answered. The boy felt that she did not altogether welcome the interruption.
Both carriages came to rest beside a thicket of willows.
“The estate of the honourable Peng Yeh?” the driver said. He was a short, burly man. “It is not an hour from here. I myself am going after my master. News has reached us of revolts in the Capital, and my mistress desires my master to return from the neighbourhood of danger.”
Ah Lai said: “He will be following along this road in an hour or so, and not alone. I carry the Emperor’s commands to your mistress, so we had better exchange carriages, for my horses are not as fresh as yours.”
The man shook his head. That is a tale,” he said, “which no man could credit, for the messengers of the Emperor wear other clothes than yours. They have red kneecaps and other men on horseback with them. No—you are not the Emperor’s messenger.” He drew on the reins as if to move forward.
Ah Lai answered: “Your mistake is a natural one. Perhaps it would be truer to say that I am the messenger of General Tung, who is commanding the soldiers whom the Emperor brings here. I have his letter, if you will look at it.”
But the driver of the other carriage made his whip whistle round his head and, as his own horses moved forward, slashed sharply at Ah Lai’s. For a little while the thicket moved rapidly round him and Kuei-fei, and when the horses were again on their four feet Ah Lai saw Peng’s driver nearly out of sight oh the road by which they had come. Kuei-fei was sitting on the floor of the carriage, laughing.
“Help me to my feet,” she said. “There must be a stream in the midst of that thicket of willows. Would it not be wise to see if we can reach it, and water the horses? That will calm them, after their fright, I think I have twisted my foot.”
He left her on the floor while he coaxed the horses by an almost overgrown track towards the edge of the hidden stream. He loosened their girths and let them drink. Then he tied the reins to a bush and lifted Yang Kuei-fei out of the carriage and set her down.
“You have not twisted your foot,” he told her. “That is a trick which women have when they want men to touch them. I know.”
She stood straight up, lovely in her anger. Then she lifted her hand and slapped him hard across the face. Neither said anything, but they could hear each other breathing. Slowly he stretched out his hand and caught hers, drawing her towards him. She took his hand and bit it. He turned her round and put her on the grass face down.
“So much for the Emperor,” he said.
She was still trying to slap him as he untied her girdle.
PART TWO
The lady Lia, whom men called the Lady of the Tapestry, wife of Peng Yeh, stood at the great house gate of Peng’s farm at Ma Wei, watching the yellow road.
“There is a carriage,” she cried. “Let all be made ready! No—stop. It is not your master. A woman seems to be driving, and she is alone.”
Yang Kuei-fei reined in the horses and looked at Peng’s home.
She saw a high wall of baked brick surrounding the main buildings; from the slightly greater height of the roadway she could look over this wall and notice the houses and stores which backed against it round the central, empty space. Peng (or maybe his ancestors) had not been content to leave the impression of a self-contained farm, for at the far end of the enclosure there seemed to be an attempt at landscape gardening, with rocks, stunted trees, a bridge, a summerhouse. . . .
In the main wall, fronting the entrance, three gates stood shut.
Yang Kuei-fei pushed with her foot at the sleeping boy.
“Now is the time for you to perform your embassy,” she told him. “Do not let it be too obvious that I had to waken you.”
He yawned and rubbed his eyes.
“I wish,” he said, “that my father had not seen fit to present me with so generous a nature. Where is General Tung’s letter? Ah, I have it! A little crumpled, perhaps. Drive on.”
Kuei-fei shook the reins.
Peng Yeh’s wife sat awaiting them at the end of the long hall into which they were brought. The two tall servants halted and stood aside. One of them said, unnecessarily: “The Lady of the Tapestry will see you.”
She rose to her feet and bowed.
“In my husband’s absence I must do my poor best to make up for the hospitality which he would have wished to be shown,” she said. “You have come far?”
Ah Lai answered: “I have letters from your honourable husband and from General Tung, who is acting for the Emperor.” They all bowed at the Imperial name. Ah Lai went on: “I have to make arrangements, with your help, for the body of men which will presently arrive with the Emperor himself. You will see this in the letters. This lady is the Lady Yang Kuei-fei, whose name will not, I think, be strange to you even here.” He gave her the two letters, waiting while she read them.
She said: “You must forgive me, the two of you, for thus neglecting my duties as hostess. But it is only once in a lifetime that a woman at the same time receives orders from the Emperor and meets one so famous as the Lady Yang, so that you will, I am sure, understand.”