Honeysuckle chattered as her short steps kept up with his. “My father taught me to swim before he died. Many girls cannot swim, I know. Clear Rain cannot. But I have never forgotten. It is one of the things which one does not forget. You can swim? How thin the moon is! The shadows seem only a little blacker than the stones by the path. There is the pool. They say that Han Meng-tsu used to swim here, at night, too. He died, you know. Wang Wei was his great friend. But your uncle, Li Po, will have told you of Han Meng-tsu. Look—the moon is in the water. Your uncle always writes about the moon. He seems very fond of it. One might almost say that he loves the moon. The weeds are on the other side: this is quite clear. Give me your hand: I do not know how deep it is, just here. Ah, the bottom is stone. Come: the water is lovely and cool, like a lover who does not know desire. If this were the whole of life! Do not stand there watching me! Of what use is it if I bring you to the pool and you only watch me? I will swim to the other end, if you are shy, though why you should be shy, with such an uncle, I do not know.”
She moved off through the silent water, her dark head a shadow on the quiet ripples, hardly stirring the black, round plates of the water-lilies. Ah Lai slipped off his clothes, shivered as he put a toe into the water, then stooped and with hands and feet on the hard, stone bottom, looked out at the surrounding trees, the faint line of the clouds, the bank. . . . He waded in farther, upright now. The cool water rose to his waist, to his chest. The lilies, nearer, rustled continuously together with the ripples of his movement.
Honeysuckle came up in front of him from her noiseless dive. She was holding one foot close to her face.
“Something sharp on the bottom,” she said. “Carry me.”
He picked her up and waded to the shore. She was unaccountably warm in his arms, and her hands clung to his shoulders when he put her down and knelt beside her.
“You are very strong,” Honeysuckle told him, in woman’s earliest gambit.
Han Im turned uncomfortably in his sleep, and (like Chuang Tzu’s butterfly) his consciousness came near the surface. In this half-waking state he was aware of doubts as to the wisdom of his actions. At the Porcelain Pavilion he had stressed the need for haste if escape were to be successful—now he was dallying here, at the Poet’s Pleasure Cottage—he told himself with sleepy scorn—while along the roads the Emperor’s messenger rode post haste in search of a girl, a poet and an eunuch!
Winter Cherry’s fate he could dimly descry, but women, he reflected, were meant to suffer in the end, and were better fitted than men to endure pain and punishment, by reason of their inferior sensibility. The poet? Li Po would escape anything, as he had always escaped everything, by a mixture of bluff and lying. And (Han Im reflected, waking up) Li Po had shown the good sense to remove himself to another place, remote from what would be the immediate cause of the Emperor’s wrath. Himself? By persistence and intrigue had eunuchs come to exercise an increasing power in the palace, a power commensurate only with that of the favoured Lady Yang and her family, and now, with so perfect an opportunity for venting rage on a eunuch, would it be to be wondered at if the Emperor’s inventiveness rose to the occasion? Han Im had seen examples of the Emperor’s inventiveness. He shivered a little and drew up the clothes, determined to be miserable.
And to think that he had only, as an added reason for his sentimental folly, the sudden, worshipping passion of Ah Lai for this girl Winter Cherry! Had he, Han Im, shown himself so unworldly, so unwise, simply from transferred emotions? Had he sublimated his almost forgotten but ever present loss into actions which would put him forever beyond the reach of further loss—save of his head?
Conscious that his thoughts were being muddled, and since it would be stupid indeed to get up and do something now, immediately, when dawn hesitated like a laggard dancer, Han Im slept.
He was awakened in earnest by the loud beating on the main door, and his heart leaped to his throat. Well, let them find him in the dignified sleep of one whose conscience is clear! He lay, flat on his back, the wooden pillow making him think every moment more regretfully of an executioner’s block, his arms straight at his side, controlling his breathing to the steady rustle of innocence.
The knocking was repeated. There were men’s voices, and a women’s voice, raised. This woman’s voice seemed familiar. Then he heard a man cry: “Open for the Lady Yang!” and become on the instant cool, awake and capable.
He went out, lit a torch and unbarred the door. Sleepily, beside him, Ah Lai came from the room which Li Po had occupied, and Han Im spared a moment to wonder why the sleeping arrangements had been changed. Could the girl have turned him out so soon?
The Lady Yang came towards them from her carrying chair.