He looked at her as she knelt there with the broth-bowl in her hands, and saw how like a younger Winter Cherry she was. Her long plaited hair was bound with the red cord of an unmarried girl, and her eyebrows owed nothing to her own art. Her garments were of a quiet dove-blue, her collar cut high.
“You are only twelve?” he asked. “I should have thought you older.”
She replied: “My sister is older, and my elder sister older still. Will you be pleased to drink the broth, your Majesty?”
Ah Lai replied: “Set it down, and stand up. There is no need for you to behave in my presence with such extreme formality. Why have you brought me this broth?”
She answered him: “My eldest sister is a palace-girl. My parents and my brother and sister think that I am ignorant about it, but I am not. It is a great honour to be taken into your palace, as Winter Cherry was taken. I should like to go myself and see the great buildings, the parks, the famous men who move about your Majesty, the poets and the singers . . .”
“There is nothing worth while to be seen at an Emperor’s palace,” he told her, and saw her disappointment “You need not think that I am telling you that in order to deceive you: it is true. Men, there, are just men like everybody else—more anxious for fame, perhaps, more seeking of personal advancement. Life there is a shallow shell, not to be spoken of in the same breath as this life here, close to the earth, under the bright skies and the rain of heaven. You are fortunate to be what you are. You surely did not hope to follow your sister?”
She replied: “That would be too much to hope. But wherein is she better fitted to entertain your Majesty than I? I can sing a little, and play the lute, and even dance. She can only play a flute, and that not very well. Yet they took her. And now she has come back here, to her home, with your Majesty. They think that I do not know that, either, but then they never expect me to listen at doors, so that I heard Winter Cherry and my mother talking when Winter Cherry came back. Why is my sister not here with you now? Do you not want her any more?”
“You would not like to be a palace-girl,” Ah Lai told her. “You are put with many other girls in the Pepper Rooms, to be looked after by old women and eunuchs, and then, very seldom, you might be sent for by the Emperor when he picks your name, usually by chance, from one thousand others, and a eunuch carries you in to the Emperor wrapped in a swansdown quilt but with no other clothes at all, and leaves you to the Emperor, Would you like that?”
“If your Majesty wishes it,” she answered. “But could I not come in myself, without being carried, as I have come now? Besides you speak as if you were looking on at the Emperor and me. Why do you speak of the Emperor as if he were someone else? You . . .”
The door opened, and Han Im, the sword still belted on, brought in Winter Cherry.
Han Im said: “This girl was trying to get herself killed in place of Kuei-fei. She did not know that Kuei-fei had hanged herself with a bowstring. Fortunately I was in time. But you had better get up and prepare to ride, Ah Lai, for we move on. News has come that the rebels are moving after us from Chang-an. Is this the girl’s sister? Then she can look after her while you get ready to ride with the Emperor. Your duties must be considered before your pleasures.” He went out.
Peng Mooi-tsai said: “So you are not the Emperor? Of course, I can see you now that the light is better. I would not have spoken so if I had known how young you were. You should have told me at once. And how did you know all that about girls carried being in to the Emperor?”
Winter Cherry took Mooi-tsai by the hand and led her out.
Ah Lai dressed himself with care, for not only was he to ride into the far west in the Emperor’s train, but it was still possible that, in the interval before their going, he would have the chance to explain to Winter Cherry why he had been innocently deceiving her sister. It was of no use now, but he might manage to see her alone.
Winter Cherry knelt before the tablet of her great-grandfather in the Hall of Ancestors. It was quiet here, and a thin column of smoke rose straight into the still air from the little pile of sandalwood which she had put in the burner.
“Do you, my ancestors, make of me and my desires what is best for the honour of our family. I have been honoured in the bed of the Emperor, and now the Emperor flees before his rebel enemies. I have been honoured in the declared love of Ah Lai, and now Ah Lai rides to his death in the Emperor’s service against these rebels. I have tried to save the life of the Emperor’s beloved, the Lady Yang Kuei-fei, but in vain, for she is now crushed beneath the feet of the horses, her garments are stained with blood and dust, her kingfisher pins are trampled underfoot, and the glory in the Emperor’s eyes has gone, leaving an empty space.