In the eighth month, autumn now upon them, Chu Pou — the Empress Dowager's own father and Great Jin's Grand Commander for the punitive campaign over the military affairs of Qing, Xu, Yanzhou, Yu, and Yang — raised his army for the Northern Expedition. Barely a month and a bit into it, his Qingzhou vanguard met defeat at Daibei, and he fell back in sorry disarray to Guangling. Yet during his time at Pengcheng in Xuzhou, common folk of the Central Plains had been submitting to him by the thousand each day. And since the Grand Commander's office plainly treated these refugees as spoils of war, granting special leave for this batch to cross the river and be resettled, Jingkou — the great gathering point of Central Plains refugees, the seat of Southern Xuzhou's emigrant administration — naturally could not avoid gaining tens of thousands more people with his return.
This made the markets along Jingkou Road noticeably livelier this autumn than before.
But to be fair, ever since Minister over the Masses Xi Jian made Jingkou his project, these newly arrived refugees were no different from the refugees who had reached Jingkou over the past several decades — equally poor, equally disruptive of public order, equally dependent on the court for resettlement and relief.
So when these people came to market, they had no money to buy with, and all they had to sell was worn-out clothing and rags, straw sandals, split firewood — at most, come winter, adding their grown sons and daughters to the list.
It was a false liveliness.
And yet these Chuzi from the north always managed to bring the people of Jiangnan some new amusement... In one roadside market, there was even a seller of sandals and mats playing a flute to draw customers.
You must understand: music was a plaything for gentlemen — at the very least for men of humble families, monks, or Daoists — to play and savor. Of Jingkou's several hundred thousand white-register Chuzi, eight in ten were refugees who had fled here within the last few decades. When had any of them heard such a thing?
And those who had heard music wouldn't come here anyway.
So even with the whole market stuffed with straw-sandal and mat sellers, nothing kept this stall from doing the best trade and selling the fastest... as though its stock had always been ample and its quality fine; barely half a month after arriving, it was already famous.
The stall had even hung up a small wooden board with three characters charcoal-written on it — "Ren Gong's Sandals" — which made it more eye-catching still.
"Look out! Blade-and-axe retainers!"
Just as the flute's "Two Tigers" was coming round on its third repeat, someone suddenly hissed the warning under his breath. At once — never mind the men and women, old and young, who had huddled together to listen — even the surrounding vendors began rolling up their goods, hoisting them on carrying-poles and dragging them aside to clear the road.
The young flute player — in a short coarse tunic and plain trousers, a headwrap wound round his head, fifteen or sixteen by his looks — had long since worn this routine smooth. He only sighed; then, together with the several companions about him, some packed the stall, some pushed the cart, and in a blink they had all ducked into the small ditch behind a great tree off to one side.
Then, as always, the whole market stood watching the gentlemen's convoy, its way cleared by blade-and-axe retainers, shrink into the distance for a long while before order was restored.
"Why the blade-and-axe retainers again? Business was going so well!" one companion burst out in exasperation. "Ah Cheng's flute had pulled in half the market's customers, and in a moment they were all gone."
"Brother Jili, will the blade-and-axe retainers of these Jiangnan great clans actually hack people down in the street or not?" Liu Cheng, none too calm himself, clutched his flute and asked the man at the next stall — the flute's original owner, Liu Jili.
The other stood to one side, arms folded across his chest, the beam cap gone from his head, a headwrap in its place — the last time they had gone to market it had chanced to rain, and while they were packing up Liu Cheng had seen with his own eyes this fellow pushing a cartload of mats, slipping, and tumbling into a ditch; the jinxian cap, rotted through long before, had presumably been dashed to pieces against the great tree beside it.
Yes — just as everyone supposes — this Liu Jili too had lately taken to selling straw sandals and mats with a few men under him!
It turned out that once they had exchanged names that other time, it came to light that this fellow's background was almost "akin" to Liu Cheng's: he too was nominally of the Pengcheng Liu clan, likewise claimed his father and grandfather were somewhere up north, alive or dead unknown, and had likewise thrown in with a refugee commander of Pengcheng Liu stock, getting by on the line that "same surname, come a thousand li to seek kin — no different from blood kin." He had simply reached Jingkou two or three years before Liu Cheng, that was all.
So that day, once he had pumped Liu Cheng for the trade secrets, the man — with no notion of fair play — went straight back to his own refugee commander and set up a similar straw-sandal-and-straw-mat work group.
Of course, his business did not seem to be flourishing.
The heart of the matter was that the sandals and mats his people turned out were plainly poor in quality: clearly no technical-development effort had gone into them, and presumably no crack hands had truly been assigned to the work.
And on top of that, the flute the man had traded away for sandals worked against him too. Liu Cheng had never played the flute, but in his previous life he had dabbled a little at the electronic keyboard as a boy and knew the bare elements of music theory, and had groped his way to a tune on his own.
To be fair, even Liu Cheng could tell he played only barely in tune, sometimes not in tune at all. But almost no one in this age was willing to play music for common folk, so the effect was striking, and customers drifted to his stall to hear the tunes.
Under those conditions it would have been a wonder indeed if Liu Jili's business were good.
"Actually..." Liu Jili, arms still folded, began to explain.
"Spare me the mystery — all this 'in principle,' 'nowadays'... Just tell me: do they cut people down or not?" Liu Cheng was losing patience.
"I truly am not being mysterious." Liu Jili laughed helplessly. "Here is how it was. When our dynasty first crossed south, these blade-and-axe retainers really did cut people down... Common folk would crowd round to gawk at the great clans, and the clans would simply set the retainers on them to hack a way through — blood spattering five paces. Nor was it only hacking people down: when a clan married off a daughter, several thousand bondservants would march before her bearing torches, scorching every tree along both sides of the road dry and then burning out a whole village; when a clan was short of money, it would lead its bondservants to seal off a ferry crossing and rob every soul in turn; they slaughtered their own bondservants at whim... Every cruel, lawless deed you can imagine — they did them all. They say it was a legacy of Luoyang!"
A fine legacy of Luoyang!
Liu Cheng listened with relish; his irritation quite gone, he only urged him on: "And then?"
"Then, once the situation had steadied somewhat, Emperor Yuan of our dynasty appointed several stern ministers, who punished no small number of men according to law... For a time, these great clans dared not violate even the night curfew in Jiankang." Liu Jili turned abruptly grave. "But what came next you ought to know as well: precisely because of that, the Wang Dun rebellion was provoked. Those chastened sons of great families either answered Wang Dun outright, or sat on their troops and watched him stir up chaos; worse yet, some who had earlier taken an edict to hold Stone City handed the city over the moment Wang Dun appeared. In the end those ministers could only die or flee, and even Emperor Yuan himself died under circumstances no one could untangle."
"Tsk." Liu Cheng's interest sharpened further. How was he to know anything about the Wang Dun rebellion, let alone how it had run its course?
"After Emperor Yuan died, the great clans naturally slipped back into their old ways. But before long came the Su Jun rebellion. Su Jun was a refugee commander out of Yuzhou: he broke through Jiankang itself, stripped the great clans of the court bare, and threw them onto Mount Zhong to serve out forced labor, and Minister over the Masses Xi Jian had no recourse but the refugee army he had raised at Jingkou to deal with him... Only after that affair did the troops of the Western and Northern Garrisons rise to greatness — and with them, lenient treatment of refugees."
"So that's how it was." At last Liu Cheng saw it clearly.
The Wangs sharing the realm with the Simas, great clans and aristocratic clans running the government — he had heard all that until it wore thin; what he had never imagined was that a refugee commander could rebel his way into being worth the court's courting. No wonder all Jingkou was a world of refugees, with no great clan coming in to despoil it wholesale.
"So no, I am not fobbing you off." In the end Liu Jili still gave an answer that settled nothing. "As matters actually stand, since the Su Jun rebellion there is no reason any great family would cut a man down on this Jingkou Road without cause... But then again, with the Wang Dun rebellion behind them — if one truly did cut you down, what could you do about it? And besides, who nowadays would dare restrain these great families? It all rests on their consciences, nothing more."
"Ah Cheng, you're woolgathering. How would the authorities ever govern these great families?" Old Liu San, who had been listening half the day, cut in at this point. "Even back then north of the Huai, when some ordinary wealthy household beat a man to death, the authorities did nothing... If others don't know it, do you not know it?"
How would I know it? Is he hinting I ought to have seen it in Hebei? And what's this "north of the Huai" business? Did Liu Huzi simply like beating and killing people at his pleasure?
Liu Cheng kept a straight face and merely nodded: "True. The authorities evidently don't manage this. Better to keep well clear."
And so, that afternoon, Liu Cheng did in the end play "Two Tigers" a fourth time, then packed up early and headed back... For days there had been rumors of a tiger prowling the Jurong road behind them; no one dared walk it after dark.
Scarcely were they on the road before Old Liu San began his nattering:
"Ah Cheng, don't hold my nagging against me. We are not blood kin of one line, but being of the same clan and surname, and having left home and native soil to keep body and soul together here in Jiangnan, we fit that very saying... same surname, come a thousand li to seek kin, no different from blood kin... isn't it so? And we shared bitterness and sweetness on the road together; I truly look on you as my own son and nephew. And how Ren Gong treats you — surely you know?"
"You, Old Liu San, and Ren Gong both have been no different from blood kin to me; I owe you a mountain of kindness." Liu Cheng was utterly baffled, but he knew how to play this after all.
"In that case, never be of two minds!"
"Of two minds?" The youth was visibly taken aback.
At the sight of him the old man first breathed easier, then halted in the road and spoke low, face to face:
"You are young, after all, and don't know to be on your guard; and these last few market days you were so taken up with your flute that you never noticed. That fellow is no good sort at all... Warm to you one moment, cold the next — there's malice in it, nothing else... First he marked you as young and gulled the sandal-weaving craft out of you. Then, once his own trade was up and running and he saw you drawing customers with the flute, he watched you from the sidelines with cold eyes, time after time; had he not feared Ren Gong behind us, I dare say he would have moved to blows and killing long ago. And today he turned warm again — is that not just because he dares not try force, so he comes with softness, hoping to coax you over to mind his trade for him?"
"Is that what it meant?" The youth heard him patiently out, then hurriedly went pale with alarm.
"Would I put the scare on you..." The old man stamped his foot on the spot and called on the other companions to bear him out.
The rest naturally chimed in, agreeing and comforting him.
By now the group had walked a hundred-odd paces clear of the market — when a voice rose suddenly behind them: "Liu Cheng!"
The youth spun round to answer — and it was, of all people, that tall, slightly stooped Liu Jili... Old Liu San and the others went tense at once.
"A word for you." Whether or not he had marked the wariness of the men at Liu Cheng's side, Liu Jili stayed at the fork in the road, a dozen-odd paces off, and did not come nearer; he only smiled coldly. "Do not think that being able to perform music will make people take you for a gentleman... With so many years gone by, without officials who knew your father or grandfather to stand surety for you up and down the land, nothing will serve! And if your father or grandfather ever gave offense to anyone, that grudge would come back on you! As for performing music — know that it is not only gentlemen who can play it. Great houses also keep performer-bondservants penned away who play it too!"
Liu Cheng started, then understood, and made the other a grave bow.
Seeing that the point had struck home, Liu Jili said no more, but turned back to the market to sell his straw mats and straw sandals... With this flute-playing rival gone, if he could just endure a while longer he might sell a few pieces — and meet with fewer sour looks when he got home.
Chapter 7