Beneath the Tree of Heaven

His eyes slowly narrowed. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying . . . that you don’t know me, Michael Lever. I’m saying . . .”

His lips slowly parted. “Who are you?”

She stared at him a long time, trying to remember hard what it had been like not to know him. Trying—beyond all else—not to imagine what it would be like without him.

“Emily . . .” she said, the word strange on her lips. “Emily Ascher.”

“Em . . .” he said softly, surprised. Then, slowly, his face changed.

“Then it’s all been a lie. All along.”

She shook her head, pained by the look of accusation he was giving her.

“No. I really did love you. I really did try to fit in with your world.

But it didn’t work, Michael. Your friends—“

She stopped, horrified. He was crying. Michael was crying. She shuddered. No, she thought. Please no. Then, quickly, before her resolve failed her, she picked up her bag and swept past him, hurrying down the stairs.

li yuan stood beneath the Tree of Heaven, looking out across the wind-feathered surface of the long pool. Nearby, embedded in the dark North China earth, was the Family tablet, the huge rectangle of pale cream stone carved with the symbols of his ancestors. He studied it, trying to comprehend what it represented; to picture all of the hopes and fears, the happiness and sorrow, the hatreds and the passion, distilled into each name.

Stone. It all reduced to stone.

It was evening, and in the stillness of the walled garden he found himself thinking back, remembering the sprig of white blossom he had plucked from his brother’s fine, dark hair, that day that they had buried him. And the wind blew. And the haft of the ax rotted. . . . He looked up, into the branches of the tree. The moon was up, speared by the topmost branch.

“Ghosts . . .”he said quietly, offering the word to the darkening sky.

“This world is full of ghosts.”

Even to be standing there seemed unreal. To be alive at all seemed . . . strange, unexpected, as if, at any moment, he would wake from life and find himself within the silent vault, there beside his father and his brother, his body cold and still.

Ghosts . . . tonight they walked this walled enclosure. As he looked down again, the wooden gate set into the wall on the far side of the garden swung slowly open. A figure stood there briefly in the opening.

“Ben? Is that you?”

Shepherd closed the door and came across. He was taller than Yuan remembered and broader at the shoulder. Moreover, he had grown a beard—a short, dark sailor’s beard. It changed him. Yet the eyes were still the same. A vivid green, they burned within the tanned perfection of his face. “You asked for me, Yuan.”

“And if I hadn’t?”

“I would have come anyway.”

Yuan smiled. “How did you find out?”

“It wasn’t difficult. When the screens went black I knew something had happened. I tapped through at once and spoke to Master Nan.” Yuan raised an eyebrow, surprised. “You were watching, then?” “The game . . . Outside my work it’s one of the few things that interests me these days.”

“I didn’t realize. I would have invited you.” Ben smiled, his eyes never leaving Li Yuan’s face. “Then I’m glad you didn’t. I understand there’s a big hole where the imperial enclosure stood.”

Yuan nodded.

“So?” Ben looked away for the first time, his eyes like cameras, taking in everything—the pool, the tree, the tablet, and, beyond it, the sealed entrance to the tomb. He looked back. “You want to talk?” “I want... to clarify things.”

“Ah . . . clarity!” Ben laughed. “How much time have we? A vague muzziness we might just achieve, but clarity?” His smile was roguish. “You’ve made your decision, haven’t you, Yuan? You know what you have to do. But you want to feel easier about it. You want me to talk away your last nagging doubts. To make you feel good about it, neh?” That last word—not part of Ben’s natural vocabulary—made Yuan turn and look at him again.

“I have to live with myself. Men will die. ...”

“Men will die anyway, Li Yuan. You’re not God. You didn’t make Mankind. Nor did you fashion them into such nasty, quarrelsome creatures. It’s how they are. No, Yuan . . . what you are is a King. So let’s talk of kings, eh?”

Yuan stared at him, grateful. He hadn’t properly understood why he had asked for Ben, but now he knew.

“What do you feel?” Ben asked.

“Relief . . . that Kuei Jen and Tsu Ma survived . . . and Tseng-li.”

“And beyond that?”

Yuan hesitated, as if waiting for something, but nothing came. He

shrugged.

“No anger, then? No burning desire for revenge?” He shook his head. Strangely, he felt nothing. People were dead, his Palace had been attacked, and he felt . . . nothing. Now that things had come to a head he seemed beyond emotion. Not numb, simply dissociated from events.

Maybe he had suffered too much these past few years, or maybe he had outgrown such feelings—become inured to them. Whichever, it was as if a screen had fallen, distancing him from that side of himself. Ben turned and crouched, putting his hand down to the pool’s dark surface. “Master Nan said that you spoke of Wang almost admiringly earlier. That you laughed. He couldn’t understand it—how one could laugh after what Wang had tried to do to you. But I told him it was natural. Fear and laughter—they’re natural bedfellows.”

Yuan watched the ripples spread. “Did you know I am to be married again?” “Again?” Ben raised his eyebrows, then nodded. “That’s good, Yuan. A T’ang needs a wife. But not always in his bed. . . .” Yuan smiled. Again Ben had read things perfectly. Ben turned, looking up at him. “Do you miss your wives, Yuan? Do you think of them a lot?”

“I—I dream of them.”

He had told no one that. No one.

Ben nodded thoughtfully. “Dreams . . . you know, Yuan, sometimes I dream of being you.”

“Me?”

“Yes ... In the dream I’m sitting on a throne, a dozen Ministers knelt before me, awaiting my every word. And do you know what I do?” Yuan stared at him, mesmerized. “No . . .” Ben stood, then took up a pose, as if seated in a throne, his body suddenly stiff and regal. Yuan laughed.

“ ‘You!’ I say, pointing to one of them. ‘Bring me the imperial pot!’ And away he trots to fetch the imperial pot. I turn to another. You!’ I say, stepping down to where he’s kneeling, ‘Unfasten the imperial trousers!’ Li Yuan laughed. “And?”

“Well... as the fellow unbuckles me, his eyes averted, naturally, for to look upon the imperial ass is a crime warrariting execution, I stare imperiously about me. Then, when the first one brings back the imperial pot, I squat down on it”—Ben made the mime of squatting, his face creasing into the most excruciating grimace—“and squeeze out the most enormous turd.”

Li Yuan was giggling now, unable to stop himself. “Then, as I back away, I command them all to bow down before the imperial turd and, there and then, I appoint it my Chief Minister.” “A turd?” Li Yuan was doubled up in laughter. “And what happens then?” Ben straightened, his eyes twinkling. “They bow . . . with great dignity, of course, and swear allegiance to the turd, and then—then I wake up. And I realize I’m just a man and that my shit. . . well, it’s just shit.” Li Yuan took a long breath, then nodded. “I understand . . . and yet . . . well, to be a King ... it is different. What one does—how one behaves—affects a great many besides oneself.” “I do not doubt it, Yuan. Yet kings forget that they are also men. It’s when they try and act as gods, forgetting their mortality, that things go wrong. Take you, for instance.”

“Me?”

“Yes ... all these years you’ve been living by a set of godlike and impractical ideals, thinking the world was somehow awry when in fact it was you all along.”

Li Yuan stared at him, astonished.

“I’ve watched you, Yuan. It’s like you’ve been bound up inside a tight corset all your life. That whole business with Fei Yen—your belief that there could ever be one perfect, unflawed love—it’s the kind of nonsense only someone who’d never experienced a mother’s love could fall for. Not only that, but your refusal to believe the worst of people until your nose is rubbed into the shit...” Ben shrugged then stepped closer, his face shining palely in the moonlight. “Of themselves these are not bad things. In fact, they’re rather admirable traits—in an innocent or a fool—but for a grown man to hold them is . . . well, to be frank about it, Yuan, it’s pitiful, and for a King . . . why, it’s disastrous!” Li Yuan stared back at him, feeling hurt and resentful, his face hard. “Is that your counsel, then, Ben Shepherd? That I should be a bastard like my cousin Wang and make those close to me hate and despise me?” Ben looked up, studying the moon’s bright face. “Don’t mistake me, Yuan. I say none of this to insult you. You are a nice man, but niceness is no virtue in a King. You wish to be a good Confucian—you wish to do what is moral—but it’s been my experience that the moral and the political are rare bedfellows. If they lie down together it is usually only a marriage of convenience.” He looked back at Yuan, meeting his eyes. “The world is as it is, Yuan, not as we’d wish it.”

Li Yuan stared back at him awhile, then gave the briefest of nods. “You should have been the T’ang, Ben Shepherd, not I.” “Maybe so, but things are as they are. Wishing them otherwise will not help. What is must be the basis of all your policy from henceforth.” “What ought I to do, then?”

Ben smiled. “You must learn not to fear death. What’s more, you need to embrace the darkness, Li Yuan, to accept it—only then will you see clearly in it.”

Li Yuan stared back at him. “You speak as if you were well acquainted with the fellow.”

Ben laughed. “Some days I think that’s true. You know, I went into the Clay, Yuan. Right inside, into the dust-dry dark. And it was . . . well, it was incredible. The rawness . . . the purity of things down there!” Li Yuan nodded, then looked down. Since his wives’ deaths he had kept himself separate, distancing himself from the world. But Ben was right. As the world tumbled into darkness, so he must engage himself with it. It was simply not possible to go on as he had.

He sighed. So it was. So it had to be. And yet he was afraid— fearfully, dreadfully afraid—of what he might become. The first step seemed so simple. He had but to utter a word or two and it was done. There would be war. And yet ... once he had set his feet upon that path, where would it lead? Where end? Into what darkness would his feet be drawn? He looked down, staring intently at the moonlit whiteness of the Family Tablet, then shook his head.

Ben was right. Night had already fallen, and he must learn now to embrace the darkness—to see through it with a clearer, colder eye. Necessity must now become his byword. Even so, he would hold some part of himself secure against the dark, against the guttering of the light. For there would surely come a time . . .

He looked to Ben once more. “Less of a man and more . . . that’s what you’d have me be, neh, Ben Shepherd?”

But Ben said nothing. He simply stood there beneath the Tree of Heaven, his face pale and shining like the moon, his eyes like doors leading into the darkness . . . and smiled.

hung mien-lo hurried along the vaultlike corridor and down the broad steps, his body hunched into his cloak as if he were cold. Four hours the bastard had kept him waiting! Four hours! While all around his City fell apart!

As the guards hastened to pull back the great doors before him, he waved them aside, dispensing with formalities, squeezing through the slowly widening gap and out into the Great Hall. He took two steps, a third . . . and stopped dead, astonished.

On the far side of the Hall, beneath a great array of red silk banners, Wang Sau-leyan stood beside the Hung Mao woman, two New Confucian officials murmuring the final words of a familiar ritual. He stared, aghast, recognizing the symbols of dragon and phoenix that decorated the Hall on every side. Seeing, from the bright red silks the couple wore, and from the way Wang stood there, that he was already too late.

“Chieh Hsia ...” He gasped.

Wang half turned. “Ah, Chancellor Hung, come across. We’re almost done.”

He walked, slowly, as if in a dream, until he stood beside the couple.

“Well, Hung?” Wang said impatiently. “On your knees before your Empress!” Hung looked to the priests, who had closed their books and were silent now, but the two men looked away.

Gods, he thought. The bastard has gone mad! Wang turned, lifting his bride’s hand, like a bloated spider dancing with a cricket. “Well, man?”

Hung fell to his knees, bowing low before the woman. “Your . . .

Highness!”

He raised his head slightly. Wang was looking at his bride, his face lit with a strange intoxication. Does he know how grotesque he looks? Hung wondered. Then, remembering why he’d come, he hauled himself to his feet again.

“Chieh Hsia ... we have to talk. It’s chaos out there—absolute chaos!” Wang smiled at him tolerantly. “In a while, Master Hung. Have you no sense of... propriety? I am a married man. Will you not congratulate me?” “Con-congratulations,” he stammered, more convinced than ever that Wang had gone mad. First the attack, and now this. He would do for them all, see if he didn’t!

“Good. Now let us go through and share a cup of wine. It is not every day a great Tang marries.”

Hung backed off, his mind racing. If Wang were mad. . . Then, bowing again, he moved back farther, letting the pair pass. He followed, anxiety making him clench his hands. If reports were true, they had already lost control over large parts of the southern City, and the Fifth Banner . . . “Chieh Hsia!” he said, his anxiety finding voice. “You must act!” Wang stopped and turned, his face dark with anger. “Never tell me what I should or should not do, Chancellor Hung! Not if you value your life.” Hung stood there a moment, horrified, then threw himself down, pressing his forehead to the floor. “Forgive me, Chieh Hsia! I am but a lowly beetle!”

He lifted his head slightly, waiting, then heard the T’ang turn, his tread move slowly away. Letting out a long sigh of relief he clambered up again, running after his Master, quite certain now that he was mad.