Chapter 29#
Young Master Li fell ill, and the Prince of Zhao paid him a personal visit. Precious medicines bestowed by the Emperor were sent carriage after carriage to the residence where Fengbing was temporarily staying. When Wu Zhiheng heard about it, he went back and told Pei Dan.#
Wu Zhiheng was not certain whether Young Master Li’s illness had anything to do with him overstepping and talking too much that night, so he confessed everything to his lord together. Unexpectedly, his lord was not angry.
There was some surprise, however. His lord widened his eyes and asked Wu Bo, “What was his reaction?”
Wu Bo racked his brain for a long time. “He said he had never known any of it in the past. I said, you two had a good relationship back then, so…”
Pei Dan lowered his lashes.
These past days, Pei Dan had been so busy that his feet never touched the ground. New Year’s greetings, and as the Chancellor presiding over the Ministry of Rites, he had to personally handle matters big and small. He fell silent for a moment, then returned to writing the congratulatory memorial he was to lead the submission of at the New Year’s assembly.
Wu Zhiheng hesitated. “But could it be that Young Master Li is thinking back to five years ago? Besides, His Highness the Prince of Zhao also knows—five years ago, you received the late Emperor’s decree…”
“He must have guessed it.” Pei Dan bit the end of his brush handle in thought, then smiled absentmindedly, revealing his white teeth. “Besides, even if you don’t tell him, the Emperor will sooner or later. You don’t need to dwell on it.”
“How can that be!” Wu Zhiheng grew anxious. “If it’s the Emperor who tells him, then the story will inevitably be twisted—”
Pei Dan tapped the brush handle lightly against his lips. “Watch your words.” Then he dipped the brush into ink again. “As long as he returns to Laozhou early, all his troubles will be settled, and no amount of provocation will have any effect.”
“How can it have no effect? Aren’t you afraid he’ll come to hate you?”
Pei Dan’s eyes widened ever so slightly.
The hall was cold and silent. Wind blew, making the paper and silk rustle. Startled, he hurriedly took a white jade paperweight to press them down, then gazed at Wu Bo with a vacant look.
“I’m afraid he won’t hate me,” he said.
Pei Dan continued in this manner, busy until the last day of the year. From the twenty-eighth of the twelfth lunar month, goose-feather snow fell heavily inside and outside Chang’an. Pools and canals froze over with thick ice, and grey cranes that had flown down from the far north stood elegantly upon the frozen surfaces. In Pingkang Ward, south of Chongren Ward—a place long renowned as a land of wine and romance—drunk scholars and ladies with festive spirits went in and out of the pleasure houses. The homes of nobles and high officials in Chongren Ward were no less exuberant: bands played music day and night without cease, and the air was perpetually thick with the scent of face powder and firecrackers. The Pei residence occupied an enormous plot of land, and mischievous children occasionally set off firecrackers beneath its whitewashed walls—crack-crack-pop-pop—and no one stopped them.
Pei Dan had long since sent home the handful of servants in his household who had families to return to, so that they could see out the old year. He spent New Year’s Eve with Wu Bo alone. On the morning of the last day, he rose early to bathe and wash, and at Wu Bo’s urging, he tidied up his own dusty bedroom. Then he went to paint the peachwood charms. Having little free time this year, the images of Shen Tu and Yu Lei on the peachwood boards—six inches long and three wide—were not finely detailed, but the fierce, glaring authority of the two gods was naturally imbued. Wu Bo took them to hang at the main gate, studying them for quite some time, saying that the peachwood charms would surely please the children on the street and might just get stolen in the middle of the night.
Pei Dan had also written out the Spring Couplets to bring out. His residence was large, with a poem pasted at every courtyard gate, so he had written a full twenty or thirty and told Wu Wu Bo to paste them wherever he pleased. Just then, messengers arrived from the Secretariat again, summoning the sitting Chancellor to the Chancellery Hall for deliberation.
Last New Year, the late Emperor had not even been dead a full year. Although the Emperor had impulsively burned some two hundred cartloads of agarwood incense, at the New Year’s Day court audience, moderation and frugality were still expected. This year was different—the Emperor seemed intent on making things grander, and his instructions to the Three Departments grew increasingly demanding.
Pei Dan washed his hands, changed into his official robes, draped on a fur-lined cloak, and rode in the Secretariat’s carriage to work. Predicting that he would not return early this time, Wu Bo himself took the twenty or thirty sheets of red paper bearing his New Year’s Eve poems and, frowning, slowly went off to find places to paste them.
Before the present Emperor bestowed this grand residence upon his lord, his lord had always lived in the smaller house next door. Later, he had transferred the title of that small house to Vice Minister Yang—but Vice Minister Yang was cautious and, beyond having people keep it clean on schedule, never truly treated that small house as his own private property. In the past, when his lord wrote Spring Couplets, he didn’t need so many; just four would cover the entire residence.
Back then, his lord would occasionally write letters to Young Master Li. A month before New Year, his lord would compose New Year’s and birthday greetings for Young Master Li, carefully sealing them in red paper envelopes and slipping them into the official dispatches sent to the Prefect of Laozhou. When New Year came and no reply had been received, his lord faced the Spring Couplets, nursing a heart full of childish frustration, and picked up his brush to write:
“Spring news, like letters from you— / Should arrive, yet long delayed.”
Looking up, he saw the withered branches in the courtyard, and his expression eased somewhat. He wrote again:
“I count the days for your reply; / By the time it arrives, how many flowers will have bloomed?”
But let alone the spring flowers—their blooms came and went, autumn withered and flourished, and his lord still never received a reply. On the Laozhou side, everything was respectfully handled; there appeared to be no sign of the envoys being turned away. It seemed Young Master Li truly did not wish to open the letters. Corresponding in secret with an exiled criminal was, after all, risky. Later, when the late Emperor passed away and the present Emperor ascended the throne, his lord had to exercise the utmost restraint and ceased writing letters altogether.
His lord had also said to Wu Zhiheng: Could it be that I’ve implicated him again? But all I did was wish him a Happy New Year.
His lord’s voice was low and muffled: How many years have I known him, yet it seems I have always been implicating him.
Before he had known Li Lang, his lord was never one to second-guess himself like this.
Wu Bo had pasted over a dozen sheets. As he walked to the rear courtyard’s hot spring pavilion, the soft, drifting mist finally relaxed his mind. He rubbed his old lower back, when suddenly he heard a voice from beyond the wall—crisp and rapid like beans being poured:
“Everything bought? Let me count: firecrackers, torches, peachwood charms, spring scrolls, peachwood figurines, Nuo masks… and pepper wine! Wonderful—it’s been so long since the master had a proper New Year…”
This was likely Young Master Li’s loyal, rather simple-minded little servant, Chunshi, talking. Wu Bo listened to him rattling off the list and couldn’t help but smile before ambling away.
He didn’t know that the “loyal, rather simple-minded” Chunshi lingered by the wall a while longer, tilting his head and pondering at length: if he set off enough firecrackers at the base of this wall, could he frighten to death the Chancellor Pei who had made his master ill?
Sometimes life feels too hard—what should you do? Please tune in to Chunshi’s Lighter Moments.
Pei Dan’s little terrible poem was written by the author. Last night it snowed heavily here, and when I woke up this morning, everything was blanketed in silver!