she would be honoured to marry Qi Wai if the Qi family approved of her, and that she hoped to bring grandchildren one day for him to teach as he’d taught her. She holds to that. She can picture it.
This evening, however, listening to crickets in the night, she finds herself sad and restless, both. Part of this will be the adventure of where they are. Travel has not been a great part of her life. Yenling at festival time can make anyone overexcited. Not to mention the men she’s met today: the one in whose home they are sleeping, and the other one.
She ought never to have said what she’d said about his “Red Cliff” poems. What had she been thinking? He’d have decided, right then, in the gazebo, that she was a vain, presumptuous girl, evidence of the error of educating women. He had laughed, smiled, engaged in conversation with her, but men could do that and think very different thoughts.
She had told him she’d memorized the two poems. She hopes he’ll remember that, accept it for the apology it was (partly) meant to be.
It is dark outside the silk-paper windows. No moon tonight, the crickets continuing, wind, the birds quiet now. She glances at the bed. She isn’t sleepy any more. She is gazing at the books on the desk when she hears a footfall in the corridor.
She is not afraid. She has time to wonder at herself, that she seems to have not closed her door after all, when he steps inside.
“I saw the light,” he says, quietly.
Half a truth. His chamber is at the front, other side of the dining chamber. He had to have come this way in order to see her light. Her mind works like this. Her heart is racing, she notes. She is truly not fearful, though. Words are important. You don’t think or write afraid when it is the wrong word.
She is still wearing the blue jacket with gold buttons from dinner, there are phoenixes on it. Her hair is still pinned, though without the flower now, which is in a vase by the bed.
She bows to him. You can start with a bow.
He says, not smiling, “I shouldn’t be here.”
Of course he shouldn’t, Shan thinks. It is an offence against courtesy—to her, to her father, to their host.
She does not say that. She says, “I should not have left the door open.”
He looks at her. His eyes are grave above a long nose and the neat, grey-and-black chin beard. His own hair is also pinned, no hat, the men had removed their hats at dinner, a gesture meant to indicate freedom from restraint. There are lines at the corners of his eyes. She wonders how much he’s had to drink, how it affects him. The stories, widely shared, say it doesn’t, very much.
He says, “I’d have seen a light under the door. I could have knocked.”
“I would have opened it for you,” she says.
She hears herself say that and is amazed. But not afraid.
He is still beside the door, has not come farther in.
“Why?” he asks, still quietly. He has been cheerful all day, for the three of them. Not now. “Why would you have opened it? Because I am being sent away?”
She finds herself nodding. “That is also the reason you are here, isn’t it?”
She watches him consider it. Is pleased he hasn’t offered the too-easy, quick denial, flattering her. “One reason,” he murmurs.
“One reason for me, then, too,” she says, from where she stands by the desk, by the bed, near the lamp and two flowers.
Something shrieks from the garden, sudden and loud. Shan startles, catches herself. She is too much on edge, not that it is surprising. Something has just died outside.
“A cat hunting,” he says. “Perhaps a fox. Even amid beauty and order, that happens.”
“And when there is no beauty, no order?”
She regrets that, even as she says it. She’s pushing again.
But he smiles. First time since entering. He says, “I am not going to the island intending to die, Miss Lin.”
She can’t think of what to say to that. Say nothing, for once, she tells herself. He is looking at her from across the room. She can’t read that gaze. She has brought only ordinary hairpins to travel, but wears her mother’s earrings.
He says, “People live on Lingzhou Isle, you know that. I just said the same thing to Wengao.”
People who have grown up there, she thinks. Who grow accustomed to (if they survive childhood) the diseases and the endless, steaming rainfall and the heat.
She says, “There are … there are spiders.”
He grins at that. She has meant for him to do so, wonders if he knows. “Enormous spiders, yes. The size of houses, they tell me.”
“And they eat men?”
“Poets, I am told. Twice a year a number of spiders come from the forests into the square of the one town and they must be fed a poet or they will not leave. There is a ceremony.”
She allows herself a brief smile. “A reason not to write poetry?”
“I am told they make prisoners at the yamen compose a verse in order to receive their meals.”
“How cruel. And that qualifies them as poets?”
“The spiders are not critical, I understand.”
He will be another kind of prisoner there. Not in a jail, but watched, forbidden to leave. This folly is not as amusing as he wants it to be, Shan thinks.
He seems to come to the same conclusion. “I asked if you would offer me one or two of your songs, if you remember?”
Remember? Men can say the strangest things. But she shakes her head. “Not now. Not like this.”
“Poetry suits a bedchamber. Songs even more.”
Stubbornly she shakes her head again, looking down.
“Why?” he asks gently.
She hasn’t expected gentleness. She meets his gaze across the room. “Because that is not why you came,” she says.
His turn to fall silent. Mostly silence outside now, as well, after that death in the garden. Wind in the plum trees. Spring night. And now, Shan realizes, she is afraid, after all.
It is not easy, she thinks, to make your way in the world while insisting on a new path. She has never been touched by a man. She is to be married early next year.
And this man is past her father’s age, has a son older than her, a first wife dead, a second living with his brother’s family, for Lu Chen will not bring her to the island with him—whatever he might say about not going south to die. He has had concubines, written poems for them and for pleasure-district courtesans. It is said that if he named a red-lantern girl in a poem, she could triple her rates. She doesn’t know if he is taking a woman south with him.
She doesn’t think he is. His son will be coming, to be a companion. And perhaps to bury his father one day, or bring the body north for burial, if that is allowed.
Lu Chen says, “I am not so vain, or unmannerly, to have imagined anything beyond talking here tonight.”
She draws a breath, and with it (with his words) her fear seems to have gone, as quickly as it had flowered within. She can even smile, carefully, looking down.
“Not even imagined?” she asks.
Hears him laugh, her reward. “I deserve that,” the poet says. “But, Miss Lin …” His tone has changed, she looks up. “We may imagine much, but not always allow these visions to enter the world. We all live this way.”
“Must we?” she asks.
“I think so. The world falls apart, otherwise. There