Sitting at a table in a room which she had never seen, Winter Cherry watched Lu-shan and his son eating. Silent servants brought dishes of food from the taster at the door and set them on the table. Winter Cherry felt herself wondering whether a sorrow could be so deep, a fear so pressing, a revulsion so powerful that the effects of these cancelled each other out and the body went on living, eating, moving and giving speech as if there were no sorrow, no fear and no revulsion.
Lu-shan was saying: “You did not behave today, my son, as your past conduct has led me to expect. Always you were the careful, thoughtful person, swift to avoid swiftness, ready for the local compromise. And then, because you see some little drab whose eyes are not on you, you forget yourself and, whipping out your uncharacteristic sword, do to the drab’s companion what I now do to this very pleasant pear. I am disappointed in you.”
Ching-hsu replied: “One cannot always be icy. And, indeed, I think that you, who used to be an impulsive example to your family, expect too much of me. After all, he had seized a common hoe and pretended to be threatening me with it. The girl watched with wide eyes, and I felt that my reputation was in question. How could I do else?”
Winter Cherry said: “He was my brother.”
Ching-hsu replied, laughing: “That could be remedied, had your father the making of a man.”
Lu-shan observed: “To implant in this girl the precisely exact degree of suitable emotions is my affair, not yours. That she will run through the gamut of these emotions is as probable as I can manage to make it. Yet I would not owe anything of their inception to you, lest you should, claim for your own mind a vicarious pleasure in my pleasure, an unearned surfeit of my surfeit. In short, our meal is over, and you have your own apartments. These are mine. Come girl.”
The next room, and the next she had not seen. She did not see them now, if seeing meant more than mere appreciation of change. She was numbed, regarding the fingers of her left hand as though with surprise. She was cold, too, cold as the back of his sword blade that slid easily between silks and skin. Her voice, also, did not seem to be her own now and the great gong that boomed forever was her heart. Straw figures at the sacrifice have jointed limbs, and these limbs move as though they were men’s limbs. But the jointed, straw figures do not live. They are, indeed, offered as simple sacrifices to Gods who were once thought to to demand real sacrifices.
His broad bladed sword lay now on the low table near the door. It could be a short leap. But his grip was round her wrist and she could not leap. His back was towards the door, and her wide eyes opened no wider when she saw Lu Ching-hsu enter on soft feet and softly take the naked sword. Whether she fainted then or not, she was not sure, but ever after, in bad dreams, the broad blade of a sword would move across her imagination and swiftly, as the dream broke, a red screen would spread between her and the light, a red screen across which the slanting sword moved slantingly and rose and slanted and moved and coloured and dripped and was thrown into a corner with a clang which was the breaking of the dream.
“I have not enjoyed this day,” Clear Rain said to Honeysuckle. “Going was all right, and it was amusing until the unfortunate Peng Chan-mu lost his temper. Afterwards . . .”
Honeysuckle replied: “It is indeed exactly as you say. And now, having brought these excellent and decorative government horses back to the Capital, they refuse to go farther. It is as if they knew perfectly well that it would be improper for us to take them to the Palace, and yet, however firmly we urge them, they stand and look as stupid as any ordinary horse that has not had the three flowers branded on his rump. We cannot just leave them here while we walk home.”
Clear Rain said: “I wonder if it hurts very much to have three flowers branded on you.”
Honeysuckle smiled. “They might move then,” she said.
Then each girl, moved by the same impulse, took a pointed hairpin and stood just clear of the wheel.
“Do not let the wheel pass over your foot,” Clear Rain said. “Now!”
“When they felt the pin-pricks, the horses started off rapidly with the empty carriage, presumably in the direction of their palace stables.
Honeysuckle observed: “We are told of the Master that he did not ask after the horses. I do not think that we need ask about the horses either.”
They did not have to walk far, but when they reached the door of Mother Feng’s house a great crowd had already collected. Mother Feng stood truculendy at her doorway, arguing with servants wearing the livery of some great family. The two girls edged their way in until they could hear what was being said.
Mother Feng cried: “You may be servants of any family you wish, however exalted, but mine is a respectable house and the only sort of gifts which I am accustomed to see pass over my threshold are much more valuable than this roll of matting. Probably your master has some sort of practical joke in mind, and if I allowed you to bring the bundle in, he would make trouble with the authorities and accuse me of having stolen it.”
Honeysuckle said to the cleanest of the servants: “Tell me.”
The man said: “We have enough trouble in the world from the orders of our mistress, the honourable wife of the exalted An Ching-hsu, without listening to the quite unmerited rudeness of that old woman yonder. I think it would be better to tip the bundle in the road and go away.”
“But why did she send it?” Honeysuckle asked, moving out of the hearing of Mother Feng.
The servant replied: “My master’s father has been killed, and nobody is supposed to know who did the killing. My mistress found this body, unclothed, in the room with her dead father-in-law, and (not wishing to complicate affairs) she thought it best to send the body to the address written on a letter in a pocket of the clothes which had, seemingly, once belonged to this body.” He held out for her to see Ah Lai’s poem and his letter to Honeysuckle. “Do not tell me, after all the trouble that we have had, that this is not the house named in the letter!”
Honeysuckle ordered: “Take it inside to our room.”
Mother Feng would have interfered, but Honeysuckle stamped gently on both her feet and the bundle was carried in. The servants returned gladly, chattering amongst themselves, and Clear Rain loosed the bundle.
“I was afraid she was dead,” Honeysuckle said, “but it seems that to invest in a doctor might not certainly be a clear loss. You go, Clear Rain, for a doctor will probably come more quickly for you than for that stupid girl Cinnamon, and there is no one else to send.”
Mother Feng, who had come into the room with them, was sent for clean, hot water and Honeysuckle, disentangling Winter Cherry from the blood-soaked clothes in which she had been loosely wrapped, laid her upon the bed and began the more immediate and necessary cleansing.
When Clear Rain arrived with the doctor the visible parts of Winter Cherry were clean, pale and apparently lifeless. They brought the doctor a stool and he sat down by the bed.
Honeysuckle told him: “I do not know what has happened to her. She does not seem to have suffered any outside harm.”