Читать книгу In a Yün-nan Courtyard - Louise Jordan Miln - Страница 9

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Not far from Mr. Kwan’s wall, but well hidden behind a spinney of willows, So Wing was holding her little black and white pony.

Q’ūo Ssu made show of surprise—almost a show of displeasure.

“How did you come? Why hold you Fan Tan’s bridle? Where is Q’ūo Lou? Where are my slave-ones? My father will beat them for this.”

“Your honourable brother is taken with the torture of cramp. He has gone to the hut of the wizard, Nung Fing, the slave-ones supporting him lest he fall. We are to find them all at the wizard’s hut as we pass it on our way back to the palace tower of eminent Q’ūo Chung. We must procure a litter then, for your honourable, afflicted brother cannot again walk. Permit this your slave to guard and attend you back to your brother and your slave-ones. None shall molest you, neither Nosu nor Miao. This, your slave, is well armed. Permit that I lead Fan Tan most carefully.”

Q’ūo Ssu frowned.

“Fan Tan can carry me in safety where you cannot go—where no man can.” It was true. “My own slave woman should have stayed here until my return, no matter what ailed Q’ūo Lou. She shall be burned alive for this. How chanced you to be here, So Wing?”

“I was seeking the market village. It is much worth seeing on market-day, you yourself have told me. Seeking the village, I chanced to pass near this place. I heard your brother groan aloud with his stomach-pain, and I hastened my loitering pace, hoping to be of aid. When I saw who it was that so suffered my liver was torn with sympathy and anxiety. I feared he was going to the Yellow Springs. When I reached him he besought me to hold Fan Tan till you came from the courtyard you visited. He besought me to give you his message, and to beg you to come to him at the hut of the wizard-one, who is so eminent a medicine-man, and whose skill the sage Q’ūo Lou your brother has sureness will have restored Q’ūo Lou’s jade health in all its accustomed radiant fulness at the auspicious moment of your arrival at the hut of Nung Fing the wizard.”

Q’ūo Ssu’s lip curled. She made no doubt of that either. She counted even more securely on Q’ūo Lou’s recovery than she had on his successful shamming of illness. She wondered how much So Wing had paid Q’ūo Lou to take her old slave woman with him to the wizard’s. Well, it saved her the difficulty of ridding herself of the crone.

She knew how much she had paid Q’ūo Lou, how difficult it had been to bribe him. But he had needed badly the coin she had bribed him with. She had no fear that he would betray what she had done. Sharp as their father’s wrath would be against her, it would fall many times heavier on him. Nor would anyone of the servant-ones dare betray her; it was in her easy power to deal them cruel reprisal. Q’ūo Chung and her other brothers had gone for the day in another direction from this. She was safe.

She gave So Wing another dark frown, caught at the pommel, and swung herself up into her high, painted saddle, and chirruped to Fan Tan to go.

She rode sedately enough at first, then kicked the willing pony to a quicker pace.

“We need not hurry,” So Wing said as he ran beside her. “Your brother will be glad to rest awhile in the shade of the wizard’s wattle after the cure-incantation. Nung Fing’s incantations are long, I have heard it said, and vigorous and fatiguing.”

“You have heard truth-words,” the girl owned. “And Nung Fing’s rice-wine is sweet to the throat of my brother. And our father will not be returned to his home until the Hour-of-the-Boar is gone.” She looked into So Wing’s eyes and laughed.

Fan Tan, like all of his breed, was small. Even perched on her padded red-wood saddle the girl’s eyes were not much more than level with the eyes of So Wing.

They did not hurry—though Q’ūo Ssu made some pretence that they did now and then. Nor did they go as directly as was possible. Q’ūo Ssu hoped that So Wing did not know that—but it did not greatly matter; she did not much care.

At first they spoke little. So Wing’s heart pounded his ribs, but his tongue was tied.

Q’ūo Ssu’s tongue was not tied, and presently she pelted him with questions. What was Sze-ch’uen like? Where had he been born?

And So Wing’s tongue came back to its own, answered all she asked. But So Wing’s heart still pounded his ribs, and fire came into his eyes, and Q’ūo Ssu saw it and smiled.

Twice she kicked Fan Tan to stop short, and ordered So Wing to scramble up the hillside and gather her a flower. There were flowers a-plenty close and low by the path where they went, but those were not the flowers Q’ūo Ssu desired.

So Wing did her bidding eagerly. She sat at her ease on docile Fan Tan, and watched So narrowly—and approved. Her young pulse quickened a little as the girl’s eyes noted how upright, well knit, and strong So was, and how goat-sure he scrambled and sprang. That was the first time.

The next time she set him a harder task, and held her breath a little while he performed it. But So Wing neither stumbled nor fell. He did not falter even when a small rocking-stone at the edge of an ugly precipice moved under him ominously. So Wing balanced himself exquisitely on one foot, waved his hand with a laugh to Q’ūo Ssu down on the path so far below, sprang lightly back to her all the way, and when he reached her he was not out of breath. He held up his offering of flowers, and smiled contentedly into her eyes. Q’ūo Ssu’s eyelids dropped her long black lashes on to her cheeks, and her face flushed prettily as she took the flowers he gave, and she tucked them into her coat, above her crimson feather.

The Chinese boy wanted one of them very badly for himself. But he did not ask. If Q’ūo Ssu read the wish in his eyes, she gave no sign. Unless the quick prod her shoe gave Fan Tan was sign.

And So Wing had to run fast to keep pace with Fan Tan.

A turbulent stream halted them; a naughty, fretful baby thing all jagged with sharp rocks, one of the tiny tributaries of the Yang-tsze that froth and foam their way to the Great River everywhere in that part of Yün-nan. Its width was little—perhaps a yard—but its peril was much. Steady Western eyes that looked at its vicious, intricate swirl might have flinched and grown dizzy.

In mid-stream a slim needle of rock rose breast high to a man. Its pointed head was sword-sharp, its sides deep-notched and saw-like.

The terrible little stream was beautiful.

The boy and the girl watched it in silence, watched it with gleaming eyes and softened faces. They were Chinese.

But Q’ūo Ssu was a woman in bud. So Wing was at manhood’s quivering edge.

“We can jump it, Fan Tan and I,” the girl said. “Can you follow us over?”

“You must not! It would catch you, and suck you in—down to the Yellow Springs.”

If he had pleaded, Q’ūo Ssu might have yielded. The word “must” angered and piqued her. And if she oddly liked the sharp authority in So Wing’s voice, she had no mind that So should know that she did. Perhaps she did not quite know it herself.

None ever had spoken to her so peremptorily before. Her little red lips curled. Her delicate apricot face stiffened.

“I wish to cross,” she said coldly.

“Let me carry you. I can take you in safety. Let me carry you, I entreat you.”

But he pleaded too late.

Before So Wing could stop her, if he could with all his strength have stopped Fan Tan—before he suspected what she intended, Q’ūo Ssu bent with a laugh to Fan Tan’s black and white ear and spoke a coaxing command.

The pony gave a startled whinny of fear and dismay.

Q’ūo Ssu spoke more sharply, and kicked Fan Tan’s spotted sides cruelly.

Terrified Fan Tan rose on his haunches, drew up his frightened feet, and leapt.

So Wing snatched at the bridle or snatched at the girl—too late.

The boy went blind and sick for one tortured quiver of time—not longer, for Q’ūo Ssu was risking her life, and he must save her or go down to the Yellow Springs with her; which ever the gods willed.

He saw again, pulling himself together in her service.

He saw Fan Tan clear the stream beautifully, stagger a little as he landed on its other side, and lift his head with a softer whinny, as if asking Q’ūo Ssu for a caress. She laughed and carelessly gave it, taunting So Wing with her eyes across the water; forbidding him ever again to forbid her, inviting him to follow her.

It had been a terrible, desperate leap. She had set Fan Tan square at the tall needle-rock; and Fan Tan had shivered and obeyed her.

So Wing followed them instantly. A little higher up, a little lower down, he might have crossed in comparative safety, springing goat-sure and lightly enough from flatter, lower stones in smoother water to stones as flat and low. But So Wing scorned to go to her so. Her eyes beckoned him, and he went to her at once, and took the shorter, perilled cut. Perhaps his young senses divined what was at stake.

Q’ūo Ssu closed her eyes as he jumped.

She felt his breath on her face, looked at him, gave a little sobbing cry, slipped a little in her saddle, and slid down into So Wing’s arms.

They did not fail to catch her—or let her go again.

They sat together under a venerable banyan, locked together in silence and throbbing happiness.

Then they whispered it all to each other.

He was strong. She was young. Her father would not give her in marriage yet—not for many and many a moon. Her father held her a child-one. Only they two knew that now they were man and woman. They had leapt over the stream of life. They had left childhood behind them. They had mated. Before her kindred suspected that she had strayed into her rose-red days, her perfumed time of music, he would return to her honourable father’s, he a rich man, ennobled and powerful. His go-between should proceed him with bride-gifts richer than ever before had been carried in Yün-nan. And they would be wedded.

There was blood on his forehead! How had it come? It was a nothing; a flick of Fan Tan’s hoof as he had reached for her bridle or for Fan Tan’s mane, whichever he could clutch, and had missed. His rich coat was torn! The tall rock had jagged it. She would mend it. One of her women should bring it to her when all the place slept. He should see how beautifully she sewed. The needle-rock had jagged his coat! His flesh had only escaped it! She leaned a little nearer against him. His arms held her a little closer.

Fan Tan browsed happy at the stream’s edge. Neither So Wing nor Q’ūo Ssu saw a drop of red drip now and then down on to the sweet grass Fan Tan was eating so contentedly. Nor would it have disturbed them. Fan Tan was sturdy. “A thorn must have caught him, or a tiger-fly nipped him,” would be Q’ūo Ssu’s reply to-morrow, if Q’ūo Chung noticed Fan Tan’s small wound, and made comment of it.