The Captain of the Guard and General Tung rode up together, dismounting at the gate. Peng’s wife had come up beside Ah Lai, and he could see that she was searching the figures before her for that of her husband. As Ah Lai watched her, Peng Yeh himself galloped round the flank of the horsemen and dismounted beside her. The horse on which Peng Yeh had ridden was sweating.
Peng Yeh cried in a loud voice: “Welcome to my poor house. All is the Emperor’s to command, as all land is the Emperor’s, and all men his.” He went on in a quieter voice: “My wife, get out of the way. This is no place for women. Busy yourself elsewhere.”
Ah Lai saw, too, that the Lady of the Tapestry did not resent these brusque words—if indeed she had heard them—but that her eyes were filled with relief that her husband had returned safely to her. Ah Lai marvelled again at the sense of values which women exhibited on the strangest occasions. He would soon be able to eat a meal.
Then the Emperor’s carriage drove up, without halting at the gate, and swung to a standstill in the main courtyard. Some of the guard rode in beside it. They all kotowed as the Emperor descended from his carriage.
He asked: “Where is Kuei-fei?”
There was a murmur amongst those of the guard nearest. General Tung and the Captain of the Guard looked at each other. Then Yang Kuei-fei came from the women’s quarters and kotowed too. The Emperor seemed to forget the others, and went to her at once. Han Im, coming from outside the gate, stood near.
This time Ah Lai heard quite clearly the remarks which the Captain of the Guard made to General Tung behind his hand.
“Lovebirds watched by a freemartin!” he whispered.
The day ended. The troops had been dispersed to barns, storehouses and other buildings in the nearby village. Only the Emperor and his suite, with General Tung, the Captain of the Guard and a small number of trusted men shared the security of the farm. The gates were shut and guarded: the last long light of the sinking sun fingered down the slope of Ma Wei and picked out the inequalities of the walls of mud bricks, the shadowed recesses by the gates, the red, tiled roofs of the buildings within.
In the Hall of Audience the Emperor, Han Im and Yang Kuei-fei sat over a meal.
“Peng is a patriot,” Han Im was saying. “I believe that he would have placed the Hall of Ancestors at our disposal if we had asked for it. You can picture him saying: ‘My ancestors served you while they lived: dead they can still serve you by providing a roof for your Majesty’.”
Kuei-fei added: “But he would not have welcomed me to his Hall of Ancestors. He looks at me as if I were not there. Do you think he can be wholly trusted?”
Han Im observed: “He can be trusted to serve the Emperor and therefore to serve you, not directly, perhaps, but to serve you nevertheless. His servants can cook well.” He eyed a plover’s egg on his chopsticks, then put it into his mouth. “Very well,” he ended.
The Emperor seemed pensive. “I am tired,” he said, “but not too tired to wonder what General Tung will decide to do. He, also, does not like to have women about.”
“I am sure that there is still danger,” Kuei-fei said. “Sometimes I think it would have been better to have stayed at Chang-an.”
“If you had done that, I should have stayed also,” the Emperor told her. “They dislike you, Kuei-fei, because they attribute to you such military defeats as we have lately had. To you and to you, Han Im.”
Han Im replied: “They may so attribute defeats, but their thinking (if thinking it be) is the thinking of a man who sees geese flying into the setting sun and believes that the sun is flying from the geese. There are other eunuchs who have dabbled in politics, but not I. To me, politics are a distasteful form of activity, for I have no desire to rule others.”
“Tung says we shall go to Szechuan,” the Emperor said. “I wonder how long he thinks it will be necessary. This rebel, An Lu-shan, will he gain or lose adherents? A Hun . . . my people will not willingly follow him.”
Han Im ceremoniously held out to the Emperor the dish containing plovers’ eggs.
“These,” he observed, “are good enough to prise our minds from our difficulties.”
In the Women’s Rooms, the Lady of the Tapestry picked up her rice bowl, spooned it half full of rice, added two pieces of fried bean-curd and a bunch of bean-sprouts, dipped her chopsticks in the sauce-boat, and then paused pensively.
“I was keeping those plovers’ eggs for your father,” she said.
Her younger daughter, Pen Mooi Tsai, stopped eating. “You did not put them all out,” she said. “Besides, we can get more. I think that the Captain of the Guard is very handsome.”
Her mother replied: “Possibly. But you have only seen twelve summers, and you are affianced to a boy in Lo-yang, so you must not think of such things. I wonder where your elder sister is.”
“Still at Chang-an, I suppose,” the girl answered.