Outside again, on the bridge, Han Im observed: “The Master told us that bad government is worse than a tiger. I look round and see the Empire failing. The Huns are inadequately held in the Northern frontiers: official business is neglected for the curve of a fair girl’s eyebrow, An Lu-shan has gathered his men and rebellion stands just the other side of T’ung Kuan Pass. Nightly, they say, the Emperor watches from his Calyx Tower for the chain of living lights which beacon to him over the miles the safety of that Pass. I have often thought with pleasure of death, and refrained only for her sake.” He nodded towards the Pavilion. “I feel in a way responsible for her, since she says that she finds my features and my habits like those of her father. A paradox, that! Oh to go away, where man finds herbs for food, when the rain of evening and the sun of midday encourage the fruits of nature, where there is no temporising with an Emperor or a conscience! On the slopes of Chung-nan . . .” He hummed an old song under his breath, then went on: “We could take the girl.”
Li Po picked up a yellow pebble from the path and dropped it into the water. “The eddies report, long after, that the pebble was dropped,” he said. “Yes, let us drop a pebble. Do they know that she is here? Or you?”
“No one knows as yet, but time is short,” Han Im replied. “Tomorrow, or full sun, will be too late. Have you a carriage and a reliable driver? She can cut her hair and dress as a boy dresses. And I have no money with me.”
“Let us be practical for once,” Li Po agreed. “You cut her hair and burn the pieces you have cut. I will first bring clothes for her and then will waken my driver.” Then he made the gesture of one who has just remembered something. “Of course! My nephew will do. I forgot that he was on a visit here. I had been keeping him out of the way of the Lady Yang. He drives a carriage and he has spare clothes for the girl. What could be better?”
Han Im agreed, and they went into the Pavilion, towards the sounds of two voices.
“My family name is Kuen, and my given names Ah Lai,” one voice was saying. “I am a man of Lung Pui, and am on a visit to my uncle here, the honourable poet Li Po. My age is nineteen years. My mother was his sister.”
Winter Cherry replied: “It would be of no avail for me to tell you my family name. My given names are Winter Cherry. I have seen not more than eighteen years. I am a girl in the palace of the Emperor, Hsuan Tsung, so you may as well put me out of your head.”
Ah Lai answered: “To ask me to put you out of my head is to ask an impossibility. Who are Emperors, that they should have you? No. I have tried in the past, like my uncle, to write poetry; I have learned the Four Books from end to end and read the other classics, but now I find myself tongue-tied, like a fish in a golden bowl that has not learned to speak, now that I have seen you. My lips seem gummed with gum from the southern provinces, my tongue adheres to the roof of my mouth, my eyes dumbly behold what my hands are too paralysed to grasp, and you ask me to put you out of my head!”
“It is not very good gum,” Winter Cherry laughed. Then the two men coughed and entered.
Li Po said: “If you wish to serve this lady, my nephew, serve her now, as we tell you. Fetch a set of your clothes and put them at her disposal. Aid her to cut off her hair and destroy the cuttings. Then get the carriage ready, for we four shall go to Chung-nan Mountain, fleeing from the haunts of men, and speed is our greatest need if we are to avoid being followed.”
Ah Lai replied: “I do not ask why you tell me this. Does a man ask of a peach-tree why its fruit are golden suns of delight? No, But if you wish to avoid following, we must walk. Carriages make a rumbling, and carriages leave wheel-tracks and much gossip amongst those who see them. But if four men walk on a road, it is afterwards as if they had not passed. Take thick shoes, for the mountain is, I believe, a full fifteen miles, and that only a fair road.”
Winter Cherry observed: “I cannot avoid seeing that you are thinking of doing all this for me, who am a very ordinary person, and quite unworthy of all this planning.”
“To say what is expected of you,” Li Po told her, “is only one side of your character. If the judgment of my friend Han Im here is sound, there is more than mere convention behind your eyes. Come—action. They say that poets cannot act. Observe, then! Han Im, you and I will collect a few necessaries. Ah Lai, while we have gone, will do for the girl what must needs be done for the girl. Come.”
They went out. Ah Lai went out by a different door and returned quickly with clothes and scissors. As he made to leave, Winter Cherry stopped him.
“You need not be so careful for my blushes,” she said. “I am a girl of the Emperor’s . . .”
“Were,” Ah Lai corrected her.