Chapter 2923: Tianjin Wei (2)

He ordered the boatman at once to bring the boat in to the bank. The boatman gaped and pointed at the river, stopped up watertight — come to the bank? How? Li Luoyou paid him no heed: find a gap and squeeze through, he said; if there was no room to land, lay a gangplank. Seeing his master's face set, the boatman dared argue no further. He called the crew together, and they punted and sculled every which way, worming free of the jam between the hulls with enormous effort, found a shallow spot hard against the bank, ran out the gangplank, and put master and servant ashore.

At Xigu the land rose in a high bank above the water. There the North Canal, skirting its edge, bends away to the southwest to join the Ziya River, then turns again to the southeast to meet the South Canal, and all of it pours at last into the main stream of the Hai River and goes surging toward the city of Tianjin. From the top of the rise the whole prospect lay open to the eye — northward, the canal came winding in; southward, low villages and scattered farm fields; eastward, far off, the outline of Tianjin's walls could just be made out; westward stretched a vast dim plain where the gray skyline and the earth melted into one.

On this key point where water and land converged there had stood, until lately, nothing but a mean village with a single cart track. Some twenty or thirty households: thatched huts set low, yard walls stitched together anyhow out of bamboo fence and straw, leaning this way and that, unequal to one hard gale. Roosters perched on their stakes, dogs lay at the doors; you heard the fowl of one house answering the dogs of the next — and so, quiet enough, the place had passed several decades.

But since the cannon bureau chose its site here, in the short space of a year or two the village had risen like a lump of dough sluiced with scalding water, puffing up all at once.

The road changed first. The dirt track that had once scarce admitted a single ox and cart was widened by a zhang and more, its surface padded with burnt coal cinders — uneven still, but at least the rains no longer drowned it ankle-deep in mire. Along this road, on either hand, new-built houses kept sprouting up. There were artisan barracks put up with official money, crude in their materials but trim, every door and window facing south, so that from a distance they looked like a rank of soldiers drawn up in good order. In them lived smiths, joiners, and cannon founders recruited from every quarter, gabbling Shandong, Henan, Huaiyang, Jiangxi — every accent of south and north droning and buzzing together, like a hive of bees kept somewhere in the compound.

Where there were people, there was trade.

Beside the barracks, at some point nobody marked, sheds of bamboo and timber had gone up, and a tea stand and eating shops had opened. The tea stand sold big-bowl tea at one wen the bowl, and refills without count. In the eating shops they steamed mantou, griddled sesame cakes, stewed great vats of greens, the cook-smoke and the steam braiding together, curling and lingering under the low shed roofs. They drew a swarm of hollow-bellied children to their doorways.

Farther on, deep in the lanes, stood a few rooms with open, well-lit frontages, faded cloth banners hanging at the doors, lettered with shop-signs of no great elegance — these were the gambling dens. They never rested, day or night. The rattle of dice, the clatter of pai gow tiles, the whoops of winning and the curses of losing, all stewed together, squeezed out through the cracks of doors and windows and went echoing down the lanes. The punters, besides the foundry's own artisans, were the coal-hauling boatmen and carters and the peddlers passing through — and now and then a few soldiers in regimental jackets could even be spotted, hunched into corners with their eyes boiled red.

Next door to the gambling dens came, faint and blurred, the plucking of a pipa and the sound of singing: the clandestine brothels. A few thickly painted women leaned in the doorways cracking melon seeds, their eyes sweeping back and forth over the passersby; at anyone decently dressed they heaped up smiling faces and called out honeyed greetings. Their accents, too, came from every corner of the land — some carrying the tones of the canal's banks, some softened with a southern lilt — and who could say where they had drifted here from.

Around the village's rim, along the riverbank, yet another stretch of low shanties had newly risen, thrown together from reed matting and old boards, and these housed the casual laborers and refugees who could not squeeze in even to the artisans' barracks. They had poured in from all four directions, dragging family and cooking pots behind them on the rumor that the cannon bureau was hiring; arriving, they found the work long since filled, and could not bring themselves to trudge home empty-handed, so they built their shanties on the spot from whatever lay to hand and waited for the day there might be a mouthful of rice in it. Through the shanty quarter the slop water ran in every direction and refuse lay thick on the ground; a few bare-bottomed children wallowed in the mire, so thin their ribs stood out to be counted one by one.

A few rag-clad children squatted at the roadside, eyes wide, watching these two strangers come down off a boat and dressed so respectably; they chewed their fingers and did not dare come close. In their eyes was curiosity, was cowardice, and a thread of something else besides — a hunger that could not quite be named. One of the older children suddenly turned and ran off, and in a little while came back leading several companions as ragged as himself, trailing a long way behind master and servant like a litter of timid little beasts.

Saoye glanced back and muttered something under his breath; Li Luoyou seemed not to hear. His gaze passed over the new-risen houses, over the clamoring shops, over the ragged children, and settled on the columns of thick black smoke at the crest of the rise, and his feet went forward without one moment's pause.

The cinder road was pocked with puddles deep and shallow, stamped out by the passage of heavy ruts — the standing water the rainy season had left behind. Green moss grew along their edges, slick as oil; set a boot there and you skated. Had Saoye not been quick of eye and hand, Li Luoyou would have gone down into them half a dozen times over. One hand steadying his master's arm, the other gathering up his robe skirts, Saoye kept up an unbroken stream of reminders: "Mind the hole here, Master... slowly, Master — the ground's slick..."

But Li Luoyou saw none of these perils. His eyes never left the black columns atop the rise, and his feet never stopped. He crossed the village lanes at a pace ill-matched to a man nearing sixty, quite unconscious of the mire spattering his robe skirts; the mud dashed up by his boot soles flecked his trouser legs, and he could not be troubled so much as to glance down at it.

Saoye panted along behind, groaning inwardly — what had come over the Master today? A man who ordinarily called a halt to rest every few steps, and today he walked as though he had changed into somebody else entirely.

Li Luoyou made straight for the smoking compound that stood at the top of the rise. The nearer he came, the hotter the air, and the thicker the smell of iron rust and scorched coal. The din of metal under the hammer could already be heard — ringing and clattering, as if several dozen smiths had all set to at once, the blows falling thick as a summer squall. And off the smoke columns the wind blew over hotter and hotter, laden with dust and the reek of scalding iron; it flattened against the face until a man's throat ran dry and his lips drew tight.

But only when he came right up to it did Li Luoyou find the whole place shut away behind a wall of blue brick, high and long, that screened most of the buildings and works of the cannon bureau from view. The wall stood a zhang and more in height, its joints packed with lime and pointed smooth; along its crown, shards of broken porcelain had been set to foil climbers. At its foot weeds grew, a glossy green, swaying faintly in the hot wind.

Li Luoyou could only hug the wall's base and circle round and round, hoping to find where the gate might be. He walked one stretch, turned a corner, walked another, turned again — the wall seemed to have no end to it, ring upon ring enclosing the cannon bureau at the center, without one seam to be found anywhere. Saoye trailed behind at a trot, barely able to hold his master's pace, clutching tight the box with the visiting card in it, grumbling and mumbling complaints under his breath.

"Who's that, skulking about this place, poking your heads and peeping!"

From around the corner of the wall a dozen-odd soldiers swung suddenly out, matchlock muskets, long spears, and military forks in hand, and ringed the two of them, master and servant, in the middle. These men wore motley regimental jackets, some blue, some gray, some scrubbed white as bone; every face wore a bully's look, and a hard glint came into every eye. The muzzles of the matchlocks stood black and hollow against them; the spearpoints glittered cold in the dull light of the overcast sky.

"You two wretches — come to spy for the Eastern Captives, have you, or creeping about as the Shorn-hair Thieves' agents?" A squad-leader-looking fellow, hand pressed to his waist-saber, barked out the challenge. The man was thirty-odd, square-faced and wide-mouthed, his cheeks all slabs of meat; a knife scar ran from the corner of his eye to the root of his ear. He wore a stone-blue front-fastened short jacket, and across its chest, bold as brass, was stitched a lion rank badge — a badge only a fifth-rank military officer was entitled to wear. Where would the head of a gate guard get the standing for that? Plainly the man was dressing above his station.

The soldiers closed in, fanning wide, penning Li Luoyou and Saoye at the center. Some brought their matchlocks up, stocks to their shoulders, fingers resting on triggers; some leveled their long spears, the points barely three chi from Li Luoyou's chest; still others hefted their military forks, the spread twin tines like a pair of open claws, ready at any instant to lock about a man's neck. The posture was not what you would take up against an old man and a boy, master and servant — they might have been closing on some storied river pirate instead.

Li Luoyou was not alarmed. Years before, for the convenience of his trading, he had made a donation and taken an honorary seventh-rank title; of late he always traveled with cap and belt complete, and that bronze seal of office never left his person. Now he straightened his back slightly, shook out his sleeves, and said in a ringing voice: "Your humble servant is pressed by public business, and merely borrows passage by way of your ground here. What cause have you stalwart men for so much suspicion?"

Long dwelling in the capital had given him the nourished air of office; the tone of his speaking, the set of his stance, the unruffled command in his eyes — these were not things common folk could counterfeit. The soldiers looked one to another, and wariness crept into their glances; they took themselves to have blundered by pure chance into some investigating censor of the scrutiny offices out inspecting the roads, and their bluster shrank by three parts.

One man quietly tilted his matchlock's muzzle aside; another drew his spear back a little. A few of the younger soldiers even gave ground half a step without knowing they did it, opening up a small gap in the ring.

Only the squad leader went on thrusting out his chest in bravado, flaunting the lion badge he had no right to wear, nostrils aimed at the sky, the very picture of a man who counted no one in his eyes: "Never mind your superior this and inferior that — I ask you for your seal of office, and can you produce it or can't you? A spy is what this is. Seize him!"

As he spoke he pressed forward a step, took his hand off the saber hilt, and reached out to seize Li Luoyou by the collar. Saoye, quick of eye and hand, slanted himself in front of his master — the squad leader gave him a shove that sent him staggering back two steps, all but to the ground.

"You paltry soldier — have you swallowed a bear's heart and a leopard's gall, daring to lay hands on my master!" Saoye found his footing, his face gone livid, and fumbled out the card-case in a fluster, drew from it a great red visiting card, and held it up high. "Do you know Grand Secretary Xu's card when you see it? Anybody with sense had best withdraw, quick — or it will go very hard with the lot of you!"

The card was of the finest Xuan paper; across its gold-flecked cover ran large characters — "Xu Guangqi, with respects" — the brushwork sinewy, the ink lustrous and black. Saoye lifted the card above his head and brandished it before the soldiers' eyes, and its red face stared out startlingly bright under the overcast sky.

At the sight of the card the soldiers looked from face to face, more at sea than ever. They could not read, true — but the visiting cards of the great ones at court they had all seen the like of, and this could not be faked. Such a thing never fell into ordinary hands. Since this master could produce so grand a card, his backing must be something considerable; give offense to him, and it truly would go hard with them. The sharper wits among them had already quietly put their weapons away and were standing meekly to one side, wearing the faces of men to whom nothing whatever had happened.

"Laozi can't read! Who knows what counterfeit trash you're waving there?" The squad leader, unmoved, slashed the card out of his hand and sent it to the dirt, where the great red visiting card fell into the mire, and Grand Secretary Xu's treasured calligraphy was fouled past all recognition in an instant. Hands on hips, head cocked sideways, he jerked his chin at Li Luoyou and ordered his soldiers to search the pair of them, master and servant, on the spot.

Li Luoyou understood well enough. Not know his characters? The man knew precisely how to trade on illiteracy to extort a purse. These gate guards had marked the two of them, master and servant, as well dressed and free with their spending, and the crooked heart had risen in them. And he himself, coming ashore in such a hurry, had brought no retinue but the one Saoye. Unless some silver was broken out, this was not likely to end well.

Just as the row reached its worst, a burst of angry shouting in a Songjiang accent came over the wall: "You lot — posted to guard a place of consequence, and here you are again yowling and stirring up trouble! Let Intendant Jiang hear of it, and he'll have every last one of you seized and flogged till your backs bloom!"

The voice was not loud, but it carried an authority no one would have thought to question, and like a basin of cold water dashed over their heads, the soldiers' spirit sank on the instant. Even the squad leader started slightly; his hand slid from the saber hilt, and he turned to look toward the sound.

(End of chapter)