An Inch of Ashes (CHUNG KUO SERIES) Read online

  Wu Tsai shrugged, and climbed up on to the bank. ‘I thought we had made a toast.’ Her eyes flashed mischievously. ‘You know, eternal friends, and all that...’

  Tsu Ma had pushed forward through the water until he was standing just below the deep lip of the bank. Now he spoke, placing his hands flat on the stone flags at the lake’s edge. ‘Prince Yuan is right, Lady Wu. Forgive me, I wasn’t thinking. It would be most... improper.’

  Wu Tsai brushed past Li Yuan provocatively, then glanced back at Fei Yen, smiling. ‘I just thought it would have been fun, that’s all. Something a little different.’

  Li Yuan turned angrily, glaring at her, then, biting back the retort that had come to mind, he turned back, looking at Fei Yen.

  She was standing now, her head bowed, her whole stance submissive.

  He took a step towards her, one hand raised in appeal. ‘You must see how wrong it would have been?’

  Her eyes lifted, met his, obedient. ‘Of course, my husband.’

  He let his breathing calm, then turned back, looking across at the T’ang. ‘And you, Tsu Ma? What do you wish? Should we retire to the pagoda while you dress?’

  Tsu Ma laughed, his body dark and powerful in the water. ‘Gods, no, Yuan. This is much too nice. I think I’ll swim back. Float on my back a bit and stare up at the stars.’

  Yuan bowed his head. ‘Of course. As you will. But what will you do when you get to the far shore?’

  But Tsu Ma had turned already and was wading out into the deeper water. He shouted back his answer as he slipped into the blackness. ‘Why, I’ll get out of the water, Yuan! What else should I do?’

  At eleven the next morning, Tolonen was standing at the West Window in the Room of the Five Directions in the East Palace at Tongjiang, looking out across the gardens towards the lake. He had been summoned to this meeting at short notice. That, in itself, was not unusual; but for once he had been told nothing of the reason for the meeting. It was that – that sense of unpreparedness – which made him feel restless standing there; made him turn and pace the room impatiently.

  He had paused before the great mirror at the far end of the room, straightening the collar of his uniform jacket, when the door behind him opened. He turned, expecting Li Shai Tung, but it was the Prince, Li Yuan, who entered.

  ‘Prince Yuan,’ he said, bowing.

  Li Yuan came forward, extending an arm to offer the Marshal a seat. ‘Thank you for coming, Knut. My father will join us later.’

  Tolonen bowed again, then sat, staring pointedly at the folder in Li Yuan’s lap. ‘Well, Yuan, what is it?’

  Li Yuan smiled. He enjoyed the old man’s bluntness – a trait that had grown more pronounced with every year.

  ‘My father has asked me to talk to you on a certain matter. When I’ve finished, he’ll come and speak with you himself. But what I have to say has his full approval. You can direct any questions – or objections – to me, as if you were speaking to my father.’

  ‘Objections?’ Tolonen raised his chin. ‘If Li Shai Tung has approved it, why should I have objections? He has a job for me, neh?’

  ‘A task, let’s say. Something which he feels you should oversee.’

  Tolonen nodded. ‘I see. And what is this task?’

  Li Yuan hesitated. ‘Would you like refreshments while we talk?’

  Tolonen smiled. ‘Thank you, Yuan, but no. Unless your father wishes to detain me, I must be in Nanking three hours from now to meet Major Karr.’

  ‘Of course. Then we’ll press on. It would be best, perhaps, if you would let me finish before asking anything. Some of it is quite complex. And, please, record this if you wish.’

  Tolonen bowed his head, then turned his right hand palm upward and quickly tapped out the command on the grid of tiny flesh-coloured blisters at his wrist. That done, he settled back, letting the young Prince speak.

  Li Yuan watched the Marshal while he talked, barely referring to the folder in his lap, unless it was to take some diagram from it and hand it to Tolonen. He watched attentively, noting every frown, every look of puzzlement, every last betraying blink or twitch in the old man’s face, anxious to gauge the depth of his feelings.

  Tolonen had not smiled throughout the lengthy exposition. He sat there, grim-faced, his left hand gripping the arm of his chair. But when Yuan finished, he looked down, giving a great heave of a sigh.

  ‘Can I speak now, Yuan?’ Tolonen said, his eyes pained, his whole face grave.

  ‘Of course. As I said, you must speak to me as if I were my father. Openly. As you feel.’

  Prepared as he was, Li Yuan nonetheless felt a sudden tightening in his stomach. He respected Marshal Tolonen greatly; had grown up in the shadow of the old man. But in this, he knew, they were of a different mind.

  Tolonen stared at him a moment, nodding, his lips pressed tightly together, his earnest grey eyes looking out from a face carved like granite. Then, with a deep sniff that indicated he had considered things long enough, he began.

  ‘You ask me to speak openly. Yet I feel I cannot do that without offending you, Li Yuan. This is, I take it, your idea?’

  Li Yuan could sense the great weight of the Marshal’s authority bearing down on him, but steeled himself, forcing himself to confront it.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘I see. And yet you command me – speaking with your father’s voice – to answer you. Openly. Bluntly.’ He sighed. ‘Very well then. I’ll tell you what I feel. I find this scheme of yours repugnant.’

  Li Yuan shivered, but kept his face impassive. ‘And I, Marshal Tolonen. And I. This is not something I want to do.’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘Because there is no other way. None that would not result in greater violence, greater bloodshed than that which we are already witnessing.’

  Tolonen looked down. Again he sniffed deeply. Then he looked up again, shaking his head. ‘No. Even were the worst to come, this is no path for us. To put things in men’s heads. To wire them up and treat them like machines. Achh...’ He leaned forward, his expression suddenly, unexpectedly, passionate. ‘I know what I am, Li Yuan. I know what I have had to do in the service of my T’ang. And sometimes I have difficulty sleeping. But this... this is different in kind. This will rob men of their freedom.’

  ‘Or the illusion of freedom?’

  Tolonen waved the words aside impatiently. ‘It’s no illusion, Prince Yuan. The freedom to choose – bad or good – that’s real. And the Mandate of Heaven – those moral criteria by which a T’ang is adjudged a good or bad ruler – that too is real. Take them away and we have nothing. Nothing worth keeping, anyway.’

  Li Yuan sat forward. ‘I don’t agree. If a man is bad, surely it is no bad thing to have a wire in his head – to be able to limit the effects of his badness? And if a man is good—’

  Tolonen interrupted him. ‘You, I, your father – we are good men. We act because we must – for the good of all. Yet when we have left this earth, what then? How can we guarantee that those who rule Chung Kuo after us will be good? How can we guarantee their motives? So, you see, I’d answer you thus, my prince. It does not matter if the man with the wire in his head is good or bad. What matters is the moral standing of the man who holds the wires in his hands, like ten thousand million strings. Will he make the puppets dance? Or will he leave them be?’

  Li Yuan sat back slowly, shaking his head. ‘You talk of dictatorships, Marshal Tolonen. Yet we are Seven.’

  Tolonen turned his head aside, a strange bitterness in his eyes. ‘I talk of things to be – whether they come in ten years or ten thousand.’ He looked back at Li Yuan, his grey eyes filled with sadness. ‘Whatever you or I might wish, history tells us this – that nothing is eternal. Things change.’

  ‘You once thought differently. I have heard you speaking so myself, Knut. Was it not you yourself who said we should build a great dam against the floodwaters of Change?’

  Tolonen nodded, suddenly wistful, his lips formed into a sad s
mile. ‘Yes... but this!’

  He sat there afterwards, when the Prince had gone, staring down at his hands. He would do it. Of course he would. Hadn’t his T’ang asked him to take this on? Even so, he felt heavy of heart. Had the dream died, then? The great vision of a world at peace – a world where a man could find his level and raise his family without need or care. And was this the first sign of the nightmare to come? Of the great, engulfing darkness?

  He kept thinking of Jelka, and of the grandchildren he would some day have. What kind of a world would it be for them? Could he bear to see them wired – made vulnerable to the least whim of their lords and masters? He gritted his teeth, pained by the thought. Had it changed so much that even he – the cornerstone – began to doubt their course?

  ‘Knut?’

  He raised his head, then got to his feet hurriedly. He had been so caught up in his thoughts he not heard the T’ang enter.

  ‘Chieh Hsia!’ He bowed his head exaggeratedly.

  Li Shai Tung sat where his son had been sitting only moments before, silent, studying his Marshal. Then, with a vague nod of his head as if satisfied with what he had seen, he leaned towards Tolonen.

  ‘I heard all that passed between you and my son.’

  ‘Yes, Chieh Hsia.’

  ‘And I am grateful for your openness.’

  Tolonen met his eyes unflinchingly. ‘It was only my duty, Li Shai Tung.’

  ‘Yes. But there was a reason for letting Yuan talk to you first. You see, while my son is, in his way, quite wise, he is also young. Too young, perhaps, to understand the essence of things: the place of li and ch’i in this great world of ours; the fine balance that exists between the shaping force and the passive substance.’

  Tolonen frowned, lowering his head slightly. ‘I’m afraid I don’t follow you, Chieh Hsia.’

  The T’ang smiled. ‘Well, Knut, I’ll put it simply, and bind you to keep this secret from my son. I have authorized his scheme, but that is not to say it will ever come about. You understand me?’

  ‘Not fully, my lord. You mean you are only humouring Li Yuan?’

  Li Shai Tung hesitated. ‘In a way, yes, I suppose you could say I am. But this idea is deep-rooted in Yuan. I have seen it grow from the seed, until now it dominates his thinking. He believes he can shape the world to his conception; that this scheme of his will answer all the questions.’

  ‘And you think he’s wrong?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then why encourage him? Why authorize this madness?’

  ‘Because Yuan will be T’ang one day. If I oppose him now in this, he will only return to it after my death. And that would be disastrous. It would bring him into conflict, not only with his fellow T’ang but with the great mass of the Above. Best, then, to let him purge it from his blood while he is Prince, neh? To discover for himself that he is wrong.’

  ‘Maybe...’ Tolonen took a deep breath. ‘But if you’ll forgive me, Chieh Hsia, it still seems something of a gamble. What if this “cure” merely serves to encourage him further? Isn’t that possible?’

  ‘Yes. Which is why I summoned you, Knut. Why I wanted you to oversee the Project. To act as brake to my son’s ambitions and keep the thing within bounds... And to kill it if you must.’

  Tolonen was staring at his T’ang, realization coming slowly to his face. Then he laughed. ‘I see, Chieh Hsia... I understand!’

  Li Shai Tung smiled back at him. ‘Good. Then when Tsu Ma returns from riding, I’ll tell him you have taken the job, yes?’

  Tolonen bowed his head, all heaviness suddenly lifted from his heart. ‘I would be honoured, Chieh Hsia. Deeply honoured.’

  Fifteen li north of Tongjiang, at the edge of the T’ang’s great estate, were the ruins of an ancient Buddhist monastery that dated from the time of the great Sung dynasty. They stood in the foothills of the Ta Pa Shan, three levels of cinnabar-red buildings climbing the hillside, the once elegant sweep of their grey-tiled roofs smashed like broken mouths, their brickwork crumbling, their doorways cluttered with weed and fallen masonry. They had stood so for more than two hundred and forty years now, victims of the great Ko Ming purges of the 1960s, their ruin becoming, with time, a natural thing – part of the bleak and melancholy landscape that surrounded them.

  On the hillside below the buildings stood the ruin of an ancient moss-covered stupa, its squat, heavy base chipped and crumbling, the steps cut into the face cracked, broken in places. It was a great, pot-bellied thing, its slender spire like an afterthought tagged on untidily, the smooth curve of its central surface pocked where the plaster had fallen away in places, exposing the brickwork.

  In its shadow, in a square of orange brickwork part hidden by the long grass, stood a circular pool. It had once been a well, serving the monastery, but when the Red Guards had come they had filled it with broken statuary, almost to its rim, and now the water – channelled from the hills above by way of an underground stream – rose to the lip of the well. With the spring thaw, or when the rains fell heavily in the Ta Pa Shan, the well would overflow, making a small marsh of the ground to the south-west of it. Just now, however, the land was dry, the pool a perfect mirror, moss on the statuary below giving it a rich green colour, like a tarnished bronze.

  The sky overhead was a cold, metallic blue. To the north, above the mountains, storm clouds were gathering, black and dense, throwing the furthest peaks into an intense shadow.

  To the south the land fell away, slowly at first then abruptly. A steep path led down into a narrow, deeply eroded valley through which a clear stream ran, swift yet shallow, to the plains below.

  At the southern end of the valley where the sky was brighter, a horseman now appeared, his dark mount reined in, its head pulling to one side as it slowed then came to a halt. A moment later, a second rider came up over the lip of rock and drew up beside the first. They leaned close momentarily then began to come forward again, slowly, looking about them, the first of them pointing up at the ruined monastery.

  ‘What is this place?’ Fei Yen asked, looking up to where Tsu Ma was pointing. ‘It looks ancient.’

  ‘It is. Li Yuan was telling me about it yesterday. There used to be two hundred monks here.’

  ‘Monks?’

  He laughed, turning in his saddle to look at her. ‘Yes, monks. But come. Let’s go up. I’ll explain it when we get there.’

  She looked down, smiling, then nudged her horse forward, following him, watching as he began to climb the steep path that cut into the overhang above, his horse straining to make the gradient.

  It was difficult. If it had been wet it would have been impossible on horseback, but he managed it. Jumping down from his mount, he came back and stood there at the head of the path, looking down at her.

  ‘Dismount and I’ll give you a hand. Or you can leave your mount there, if you like. He’ll not stray far.’

  In answer she spurred her horse forward, willing it up the path, making Tsu Ma step back sharply as she came on.

  ‘There!’ she said, turning the beast sharply, then reaching forward to smooth its neck. ‘It wasn’t so hard...’

  She saw how he was looking at her, his admiration clouded by concern, and looked away quickly. There had been this tension between them all morning; a sense of things unspoken; of gestures not yet made between them. It had lain there beneath the stiff formality of their talk, like fire under ice, surfacing from time to time in a look, a moment’s hesitation, a tacit smile.

  ‘You should be more careful,’ he said, coming up to her, his fingers reaching up to smooth the horse’s flank only a hand’s length from her knee. ‘You’re a good rider, Lady Fei, but that’s not a stunt I’d recommend you try a second time.’

  She looked down at him, her eyes defiant. ‘Because I’m a woman, you mean?’

  He smiled back at her, a strange hardness behind his eyes, then shook his head. ‘No. Because you’re not that good a rider. And because I’m responsible for you. What would your husband say if I brou
ght you back in pieces?’

  Fei Yen was silent. What would he say? She smiled. ‘All right. I’ll behave myself in future.’

  She climbed down, aware suddenly of how close he was to her, closer than he had been all morning, and when she turned, it was to find him looking down at her, a strange expression in his eyes. For a moment she stood there, silent, waiting for him, not knowing what he would do. The moment seemed to stretch out endlessly, his gaze travelling across her face, her neck, her shoulder, returning to her eyes. Then, with a soft laugh, he turned away, letting her breathe again.

  ‘Come!’ he said briskly, moving up the slope, away from her. ‘Let’s explore the place!’

  She bent down momentarily, brushing the dust from her clothes, then straightened up, her eyes following him.

  ‘You asked me what monks were,’ he said, turning, waiting for her to catch up with him. ‘But it’s difficult to explain. We’ve nothing like them now. Not since Tsao Ch’un destroyed them all. There are some similarities to the New Confucian officials, of course – they dressed alike, in saffron robes, and had similar rituals and ceremonies – but in other ways they were completely different.’

  ‘In what way different?’

  He smiled and began to climb the slope again, slowly, looking about him all the while, his eyes taking in the ruins, the distant, cloud-wreathed mountains, the two horses grazing just below them. ‘Well, let’s just say that they had some strange beliefs. And that they let those beliefs shape their lives – as if their lives were of no account.’

  They had reached the pool. Tsu Ma went across and stood there, one foot resting lightly on the tiled lip of the well as he looked back across the valley towards the south. Fei Yen hesitated, then came alongside, looking up at him.

  ‘What kind of beliefs?’

  ‘Oh...’ He looked down, studying her reflection in the pool; conscious of the vague, moss-covered forms beneath the surface image. ‘That each one of us would return after death, in another form. As a butterfly, perhaps, or as a horse.’

  ‘Or as a man?’

  ‘Yes...’ He looked up at her, smiling. ‘Imagine it! Endless cycles of rebirth. Each newborn form reflecting your behaviour in past lives. If you lived badly you would return as an insect.’