Father Peng gave him a number of writings in his own, clear calligraphy. “These are my notes on tactics,” he said, as he bowed Han Im out.
In his dream, the Emperor moved uneasily. He was hunting, following in his carriage the assembly of men who advanced over the great Park at Chang-an towards the game driven to them by the beaters. In his hand the bow, in his fingers the arrow, ready to the string. Towards him came the first of the beaten game, a hare. In long leaps it covered the ground, and he fitted the arrow to the string and made to draw the bow. Ever nearer the hare lolloped. The officers on each side of him loosed their arrows, but not at the hare. The hare was his. Then, as it came so close that he could see its harried eyes, the hare suddenly fell in its tracks, struck by no arrow. The horses avoided the dead hare, as horses will, but the wheel of the carriage passed over it, and the Emperor, calling out with hoarse throat, awoke.
Winter Cherry stood before him.
“She is dead?” the Emperor asked, without expression in his voice, and sat on his bed.
Winter Cherry, taken unawares, said: “Yes. You knew?”
The Emperor was silent for a moment, his fingers tearing at the edge of the rug on the bed. Then he answered (and his voice was so low that she could hardly hear it): “I had a dream. How did she die? No—do not tell me. In my dream the wheel of my carriage passed over her body. I could not prevent it. I was hunting . . .”
Winter Cherry said: “It was quick. You need not fear that she suffered pain. Now you must prepare for your journey, for word has come that An Lu-shan has moved from the Capital towards us. Your carriage is being prepared.”
“I would rather die here, with her,” he answered, “but by so doing I should lead others to their death, too. So I must go, as you say. But my heart is empty, and I move without my own wish, like the branches of a tree in the wind. When I visited the home of the Master, Confucius, and attended the sacrifices for Lu Dukedom, I saw that my own death would follow. And it is not I who die, but she! The brightness of our lives has faded, her loveliness will never again colour my eyes. Can I see her?”
Winter Cherry helped him to put on his outer clothes.
“I do not think there will be time,” she said, mothering him.
“Do you, too, ride to the West with me?” the Emperor asked, with an unaccustomed humility in his voice.
“That is for you to say,” she replied. “I belong to you.”
He answered: “Nothing belongs to me. No one belongs to me. You are free to go and to come, as you wish. If you so desire, you may return to your father’s house.”
She kotowed, and left him, going to the great hall where the tablets of the ancestors of the Peng family were ranged on long black-wood tables round the walls.
Peng Mooi-tsai moved silently along the passage with her bowl of hot broth. As she went she reflected on the unwisdom which her elders showed in trying to keep a girl of twelve ignorant of what went on all round her. True, such supposed ignorance was a part of the system to which everyone seemed accustomed, and she could hardly blame her parents for doing what all other parents seemed to do.
Of course, Mooi-tsai thought, she would be punished for what she was doing now, and her filial duty made her quite sure that the punishment would be justified. But if her eldest sister had been taken away as a palace-girl for the Emperor, why was it necessary to cover all this with a veil of silence? Was it not honourable to be one of the Emperor’s house? She remembered the tears which had seemed never out of her mother’s eyes when Winter Cherry had gone away, and the almost fierce instruction to be doing something useful when she had asked a reason for this immoderate and prolonged sorrow. And she could have comforted her mother, then, so capably . . . Her sister Peng Mei was not nearly so able to say the right thing.
It could not be so very wrong to serve the Emperor by bringing him hot, good broth.
She pushed open the door and tiptoed in, creeping towards the bed.
“Your Majesty,” she whispered, a little overcome by the occasion, but using the extreme formality which she had come to associate with Emperors, “would like a bowl of broth to defeat the morning chill?” She was a little proud of the phrase “defeat”.
Ah Lai opened one eye and looked at her in the gloom.
He said: “I seem to have slept no longer than the flutter of a butterfly’s wing. Is it already morning?”
Mooi-tsai replied: “The sun is just showing. I hope that the broth is neither too hot nor too cold, your Majesty.”
Ah Lai realised that the mistake might prove amusing. His back was to the light, and he kept it so. “Who are you?” he asked, in the voice of an older man.
She said: “I am called Peng Mooi-tsai. My father is Peng Yeh, and my mother is called the Lady of the Tapestry. I am twelve years old, and have two sisters and one brother. I name the sisters first, since the fame of the Lady Yang Kuei-fei has made that the fashion.”