A Single Petal Read online

  Feng felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and saw a youth not much older than Feier. The boy’s eyes sparkled mischievously, and his mouth was curved into a grin that was difficult to decipher. Was the boy grinning at or with him? Or was he grinning at all? Was it just a curve of the lips? But one thing was certain. There was eagerness and vitality about the youth that Feng hadn’t seen in anyone other than Feier.

  “You’re new here, aren’t you?” the boy asked.

  “Not exactly! Let’s say you’d have been playing with your toys the last time I set foot in Wong’s inn.” “Because?”

  “Inquisitive indeed! Because I live on the other side of Three Monkey Mountain and I’m a teacher. Do you need a teacher here in Houzicheng?”

  The wiry man slapped his thigh in amusement.

  “Jinjin need a teacher? That’s a good one. I like it!”

  “Well, I only asked because I don’t know what he takes in his noodles!” The boy sounded offended, but the ‘smile’ was still there, so Feng assumed it to be just a curious curve of the lips.

  “I’m sorry! Pork, cabbage... and whatever else Wenling puts in to make her noodles so delicious.”

  The boy left.

  “Don’t mind Jinjin,” the wiry man said. “He’s okay - when you get used to him.”

  “Wong never had any helpers before. Business must be looking up in Houzicheng.”

  “Oh, that’s Jinjin, not business. Things couldn’t be worse for all of us here. The new taxes are punitive. It’s the only way they can raise an army nowadays. No more beatings or prison for those unable to pay. Just a helmet, sword and spear and you get dragged off to the west never to be seen again. But Jinjin? He works here for free, you know. Slaves away for Yungchin and Wenling and won’t take a copper for all his toil. They feed him, mind you, and a kind passing merchant gave the lad some clothes, for he stank something awful when he first appeared, but where he sleeps at night I have no idea.”

  “I keep telling you, he sleeps with the pigs!” chipped in the man with the moustache. “There’s no-one else would listen to his prattling when the rest of the town’s gone to bed. Recites poetry to them, no doubt.”

  Feng pricked up his ears.

  “Poetry?”

  “No wonder his father kicked him out. A farmer near the edge of town, he is. Used to beat Jinjin black and blue for talking instead of working in the fields. And when he did put his hand to the plough things invariably went wrong. Why, if the boy tried to grow rice it’d retreat back into the ground! Ha ha! And all we’d have to eat would be bowls full of rice arses!”

  “Och, you’re hard on Jinjin, Yaosheng! He wasn’t made for the fields, that one. And anyway, it was he who left home. Couldn’t face another beating for being caught practising his characters in the dirt with a stick.”

  “He can read and write?” asked Feng.

  “Not exactly. Would like to think he can. Watch out now he knows you’re a teacher. He’ll stick to you like dried cow-shit. Never stops asking questions!”

  “Hmmm! Sounds like you need another teacher in this place if a bright lad like that can’t read or write properly.”

  But Feng felt this wasn’t the right sort of company in which to extol his views on the education of children.

  Jinjin returned with a steaming bowl of rice noodles and a pair of chopsticks. He wiped the chopsticks on his sleeve and handed them to Feng. Yaosheng and the wiry man looked at each other. The latter raised his eyebrows and stood up.

  “Think I’ll be going, Yaosheng. Nice meeting you, teacher. By the way, I never asked what you’re doing in Houzicheng!”

  Yaosheng also got up.

  “Let him eat his noodles. You’ll be able to get his life history from Jinjin tomorrow.”

  Both men left. Jinjin’s eyes lit up on seeing two empty places at the table. “May I?” he asked Feng, pointing at the place opposite the teacher. “Doesn’t belong to me!” replied the teacher.

  The boy sat down, folded his arms on the table and gazed in admiration at Feng. There was something penetrating about those sparkling eyes, as if the boy was already reading his mind, using his eyes to uncover hidden secrets.

  “A teacher, huh? So you know all about Kong Fuzi?”

  “Who can know but a fraction of what is to be known about that man?”

  “True, true. So tell me about life as a teacher in a small village. Without a wife. Must be awful to be without a wife!”

  The cheek of the urchin! How on earth does he know I’m widowed?

  Feng poked at food in the bowl with his chopsticks.

  “Yungchin told me!” the urchin answered, anticipating the unasked question.

  Yungchin? What right did the man have to let the boy in on his saddest of secrets? At least he now knew not to tell the innkeeper about the disappearing Miao girls and the murder of Merchant Chang.

  “You see,” continued Jinjin, “I said to Innkeeper Wong... a teacher with sadness in his face, on his own, from the other valley, at times like this?

  He’ll be looking for a bride, without a doubt, I said. And Wong, he said ‘What business is that of yours?’ so I replied, but sadness is always my business, master. Yes, I call him master, for one day I plan to own an inn myself, you know. I think of myself as an apprentice, see, and I... I can think of no better teacher than Wong. But you... a real teacher? Wow! How long will you stay here... er... Teacher... um...”

  “Feng,” offered the teacher, reluctantly.

  “Teacher Feng!” the boy repeated proudly.

  Why should I be giving my name to a guttersnipe? What’s come over me?

  Feng picked up his bowl and continued to scoop noodles into his mouth. He’d forgotten how good food could taste! One day he’d bring Feier to Wong’s place just to get Wenling to show her how to cook rice noodles properly, to learn culinary skills that must have been passed down through generations.

  But for whom would she learn such skills?

  A pang of pain dampened the pleasure of Wenling’s noodles as the spectre of losing Feier to a cruel old widower or the gormless son of a sharp-tongued witch filled his consciousness.

  “You have a daughter, too?”

  Feng glanced sideways at the boy. What didn’t he know? Those men were right. He was becoming an irritant.

  “Seems there’s little more I can tell you. You know too much about me already!”

  “Teacher Feng, please don’t take offence. I only mean well. I hate to see people sad. Look, Wong made me promise, and I never break a promise. I promised my father if he beat me again I’d leave home. He did... so I did! Kept my promise, and here I am. Learning how to run a business from Innkeeper Wong.”

  “And what did you promise my friend Wong?”

  “To say nothing to anyone else about the teacher. He believes you must have a very special reason to be here and he thinks it’s because of your daughter.”

  “He said that, did he?”

  “Uhuh! And he said she must have taken your late wife’s place as the most beautiful woman in the whole province. No. in the whole of China!” Feng couldn’t prevent a smile from changing his face. How could he deny his daughter such an accolade? “’The teacher’s a man to respect!’ He said that too,” continued Jinjin.

  Feng was beginning to realise this boy was no ordinary urchin. Indeed, there was something quite extraordinary about him, something quite irresistible. Like a pump that can extract water from a deep well, the boy had a knack of making him want to talk.

  “It’s not about my own daughter,” he said through a mouthful of pork and noodles.

  “Whose, then?”

  Feng looked suspiciously behind and on both sides of him. No-one was paying any attention to them, and the background noise of talk and drunken laughter was such that his words woul
d have carried no further than across the table.

  “A friend’s. A girl of just thirteen years. Gone missing. And she’s a good friend of my daughter’s. A quiet girl, very different, but...”

  “So your daughter’s not quiet, then? Beautiful and talkative?”

  Feng nodded.

  “This girl... she’s Miao. And... “

  The teacher paused. The urchin had already taken him too far. “And she’s vanished. Right?”

  Feng almost choked on his noodles. He put down the bowl and the chopsticks and stared at the boy.

  “What’s the big surprise? Everyone here knows about the missing Miao girls from the village on the road to Chang’an, so it makes sense they’re also missing from one on the other side of Three Monkey Mountain. Of course, no-one here seems too bothered, but... “ Jinjin turned to check himself that no prying ears were within listening distance before leaning up close to Feng and continuing in a whisper: “I followed one there!”

  “Followed what where?”

  “Why, one of those White Tiger League devils. To the Miao village. We’ve had several pass through here ever since the Miao girls began to disappear.”

  Feng’s inner thoughts must have shown as clearly as calligraphy script in the lines of the frown furrowing his forehead. “Have I said something wrong?” the boy asked. “What do you mean ‘White Tiger League’?”

  “You village people! Must be a generation behind us town folk!”

  “Stop beating about the bush! What’s the White Tiger League?”

  “No point asking me that. I’m just a brainless peasant boy. I only know what Innkeeper Wong tells me, and that’s precious little. But I thought I’d find out a few things myself, didn’t I? See, I overheard this big fellow with a white tiger tattooed on the back of his hand...”

  “Mouth open... tail out... like it’s about to leap on its prey...”

  Jinjin looked anxiously at Feng’s hands.

  “For an awful moment I thought... but no, you don’t look like one of them. Yeah, white tigers tattooed onto their hands. Up to no good, Wong says. Anyway, I overheard this man talking. See, that’s the advantage of being a homeless urchin. People pay you no bloody attention at all. Why, just the other day.”

  “Get on with it, Jinjin!”

  “Sorry! I hid under the bridge opposite the inn early that morning after he’d eaten breakfast. The previous night I’d overheard him tell one of the new magistrate’s officials... now there’s another thing! The old fellow - the last magistrate - he disappeared about the same time the girls began to vanish and these fellows with tattoos started showing up. Coincidence? I don’t think so! Anyway... now where was I?”

  “You overheard... “

  “Oh yes! I overheard them, and they had no idea I was listening to every word. I’d made sure their glasses were always full to the brim with hot plum wine. And the very best, it was. Why, Innkeeper Wong has nothing but the best of everything! That’s his little business secret, of course. People are prepared to come from... “

  “What did the man with the white tiger tattoo say?”

  “’I can get you another one for a hundred coppers.’”

  “He could’ve been talking about anything. A pig? A commission for a government post. A wife even?”

  “Correct! So I follow him, don’t I? He doesn’t recognise me, I’m that unimportant. He takes the short cut across the hills to the Miao village. So do I. Hiding behind trees or bushes when he stops to take a rest or have a piss. Then he comes to the village. It’s still quite early but the men are out in the fields. No-one else around apart from him and three soldiers.”

  “Soldiers?”

  “Imperial guards! Can tell from the colour of their tunics. Purple with yellow edges. Mean-faced bastards, they were. Do you think you have to look like that before you get taken on for such a job? I can imagine those guys sitting in front of their wives’ mirrors, twisting their faces into knots... making sure they’re ugly enough...”

  “What happened?”

  “At the edge of town. A house. They’re too far away for me to hear their words, but you can tell a lot from hand gestures and pointing, you know. And lip reading. I do it all the time when the noise level here builds up to a... “

  “Yes, yes! Get on with it!”

  “Money! He gives them money. A string of coppers. Then the soldiers crouch down behind a bush and wait. First an old woman comes out of the house to feed the hens. The soldiers don’t move. The woman disappears then this girl with hair down to her arse appears. She’s carrying a pitcher for water and sets off towards the stream.”

  “A Miao girl?”

  “Well, it is a Miao village!”

  “Sorry... it’s just that... just carry on.”

  In his mind’s eye Feng could see the same story unfold in the other village, only it was Xiaopeng, not that nameless girl, carrying a pitcher.

  “I’m telling you, it was over in the time it would take a tiger to kill a deer. One of the soldiers grabbed her from behind as another pushed something into her mouth to stop her screaming. The third held a cloth of sorts over her nose. Pretty nose. Pretty girl, come to think of it. You know, they say the Miao girls are... “

  “What next?”

  “I sneezed. One of them looked at the bush I was hiding behind. I thought he was gonna shoot an arrow straight through me. ‘It’s only some beggar boy,’ his companion says. ‘Saw him further back. Let’s get this one to the cart before we’re spotted.’ As if I counted for nothing! But, that’s the good thing about being just a beggar boy. Urchin, I should say. I never beg. No excitement in begging.”

  “So they took the unfortunate girl away in a cart?”

  Jinjin shrugged his shoulders.

  “With others, no doubt. Other carts, other villages. Didn’t hang around to find out. I can tell you, those emperor’s soldiers, you could’ve ground corn with their faces they were that hard.”

  “So the man with the tattoo was a member of this... er... “

  “White Tiger League.”

  “Doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the White Tigers. Could be a league of respectable merchants. Perhaps it so happens that... well...” Feng felt confused. No way would his friend have been involved in anything so low as stealing girls from their villages, but he somehow didn’t believe the boy was lying, merely jumping to the wrong conclusion. “Perhaps some of the traders have been abusing their positions. And that’s all. Taking bribes from officials. But the emperor’s own soldiers... why? What on earth could the emperor do with a harem of Miao girls?”

  “They’re pretty. At least this one was. Look, I’m not properly a man yet, so what would I know of what you men get up to. Just have to use my imagination.”

  “The emperor will already have enough wives, concubines and slave girls to last him eight lifetimes. I can’t believe he’s sent his own guards to do this dirty business. But... “ Feng recalled the way the bamboo pole protruded from his late friend’s belly. “But if one of their own number had caught on to some plan hatched by a small group of them... and because he’d been asked to solve the mystery of the disappearances... well, he wouldn’t last long, that’s for sure.”

  “You’re hiding something from me.” The boy’s eyes bore into Feng and his enigmatic grin disarmed the teacher.

  “My friend, Merchant Chang, had a tattoo of a white tiger on the back of his hand. And then there was the pole,” Feng explained to those searching eyes.

  “Pole?”

  “A bamboo pole in my room. Sticking out of his belly when my daughter found him.”

  “Dead, of course.”

  “Dead! With only half a face. Some animal must have devoured the other half.”

  “Or someone tried to take away his identity.” Feng hadn’t
thought of that.

  “There were still strings of money across his shoulder. What villainous merchant out to become wealthy by selling off village girls would leave behind so much money on the man he’d just killed? Chang was a rich man.”

  “Rich? In these hard times? Did you never wonder about that?” questioned the boy.

  Feng hadn’t and he felt angered. What right had this impudent urchin to question the honour of his late friend and bombard him with so many questions?

  “Chang was a good man. I had no reason to ask about the source of his wealth. Besides, the fortunes of merchants are like the rains. Unpredictable.”

  “And the rains come from the clouds breathed out by river dragons, correct?”

  “So we are told.”

  “Suppose, then, a river dragon was to fall foul of the Jade Emperor, tempted by foreign demons only to give up his rain clouds to enemies of Mother China. What would happen?”

  Feng felt confused and annoyed by the boy’s persistence and agility of mind, although he could not pretend he didn’t admire the lad.

  “Look, being hypothetical never gets anyone anywhere,” he said.

  “Except for the great poets. They got famous.”

  Feng held the bowl to his mouth and scooped up what remained of Wenling’s noodles. He wistfully stared at the empty bowl, aware that because of the boy’s constant banter he’d barely tasted a thing. Denied the heavenly enjoyment of those legendary noodles, instead of scolding the boy he laughed.

  “Tell me, how do you know about poetry? Or dragons or the ways of merchants?”

  “It’s not how I know that matters, Teacher Feng, it’s what I need to know!”

  “What more, pray, do you need to know?”

  “Why you’re still sad after the death of your wife so long ago.”

  Feng stared at his empty bowl trying hard to recall the taste of the noodles. The boy could not have touched a more tender spot in the man’s troubled soul. Trying to remember those years with Meili, remember the taste of happiness, was that why he now had only sadness in his heart?

  “And your daughter who has so much of your wife in her will soon marry and leave you, and these disappearing Miao girls remind you of this?”