Before evening, Liu Cheng and the others were safely back at the camp, and naturally went first to find Ren Gong and make their report. Along the way, the women and children who saw them return let their faces ease for once, and hurried impatiently after them.
"Young master!"
Coming to a great tree, Old Liu San bowed low before Liu Ren Gong, who sat upon a mat, and made his obeisance with the utmost respect.
Against all expectation, the man on the mat under the tree — Liu Ren Gong, that is — was weaving straw sandals with his own hands. At the words he looked up, his face a mass of wrinkles. "Third Elder Brother, never mind that we've left our old home behind — even back in Pengcheng I was an ordinary man who never entered official service in all his life, and now I'm on the verge of the grave. What talk is this of 'young master'?"
"What are you saying, young master?" Old Liu San turned grave at once. "The poorer we are, the less we may abandon decorum. In the affairs of a family, if we cheapen ourselves, others will cheapen us all the more... Your father was the dignified commandery governor of Yanmen and Dai. A son of his may well be called young master. I never understood this rule before; now that I do, I must observe it all the more."
"You speak rightly, Third Elder Brother." Liu Ren Gong helplessly set down the half-woven sandal, stayed seated, returned a perfunctory bow, and went back to work.
That's right — by "young master" it was not meant that Old Liu San had suddenly married his distant clan cousin Liu Zhi in the past few days; that usage belonged to later dynasties. Here and now the word had to be taken literally. Lang was an honorific for a man; Jun denoted standing: "young master" generally meant a gentleman not yet in office but qualified for office — above all, as-yet-unofficial sons of great families — a hallmark of this era of aristocratic great clans, and also, no doubt, the root from which later ages stretched the word's meaning until it became the general term by which young women called their husbands.
A similar term was what bondservants called their masters: "young lord."
As for Liu Zhi, the awkwardness was that at his age he had never held office and had almost no chance left to do so, so such words could only needle him.
To return to the story: though Liu Ren Gong's attitude was plain enough, Old Liu San still could not govern his tongue. "Young master, you must respect your own standing. This sandal-weaving — never mind the Wang, Xie, Yuan, and Xi families; if merely the sons of Jiangdong's Gu, Lu, Zhu, and Zhang were to see it, they would laugh you to scorn."
This was too absurd! Even Liu Cheng, standing behind, could not bear to listen. What Wang or Xie son would come to this reeking place to watch an old man weave sandals? Sandals aside — even back when this Ren Gong's own father was still a commandery governor, would the Wang and Xie sons have deigned to spare him a glance?
And yet this Old Liu San had been found useful these past days, trotting after Liu Cheng to the market from morning to night and picking up a great deal of talk along the way; the rules of the great clans had gone to his head, and it grew tiresome.
Still, absurd or not, it fell to Liu Cheng to step in and smooth things over. "Old Liu San, there's no call to fret. Think of Liu Xuande, First Sovereign of Shu-Han: when his family was poor, he wove mats and sold shoes at home with his widowed mother — it is all in the histories, and no one mocked him. Besides, we came here as fugitives; in everything we must bend to necessity. And didn't someone say it only the other day? This very Minister over the Masses Xi who made Jingkou what it is — when he fled south in his day he could not get so much as one mouthful of food, and could only carry the charity of a fellow townsman hidden in his mouth and spit it out for his nephew when he got back. Yet he became Minister over the Masses all the same, a famed minister of Great Jin. What is our Ren Gong weaving a pair of straw sandals? Once he rises in the world, it will be the elegance of famed gentlemen."
"Is that so?" Old Liu San was plainly taken aback.
"Indeed. We are refugees; once autumn is gone we don't even know how we'll last out the winter. How can we stand on ceremony at a time like this?" Liu Zhi hurried to smooth things over as well, then swiftly changed the subject. "Liu Cheng, how did the mats and sandals sell today? Did you trade for much vinegar and salt?"
"The goods sold well enough." Old Liu San elbowed in first with a rambling answer. "But the wild market is so small, and between this year and last, plenty of people have come south, none with much in the way of good goods, most of them selling mats and sandals just like ours. Our doing such brisk business these past few days had long since stirred the others' resentment, and today we ran into a great family's son with his blade-and-axe retainers clearing the road... I was afraid that staying late would breed trouble, and meeting a tiger on the road home would be no better... so I closed the stall early... Roughly... roughly... roughly how many?"
"Reporting to Ren Gong and Old Liu San: in all, twenty-seven mats and fifty-three pairs of straw sandals sold today." Again it was Liu Cheng behind him who hurried to fill in the figure. "But so many new refugees have arrived lately that vinegar, cloth, and salt have all risen sharply, and what we traded back was a little less than the day before."
Liu Ren Gong's brow creased, and he asked almost by reflex: "In a situation like this, Liu Cheng, what do you think we should do?"
"Our production capacity... our mats and sandals are woven well and woven in quantity — we've even made a name. That we bring back less has nothing to do with us ourselves; it's only that the wild market is too small, and prices are climbing across all of Jingkou." Liu Cheng produced a plan at once. "So the simplest fix is to find other markets nearby and put out a few more stalls."
"Oh, so that's it..." Liu Zhi saw it in a flash and was on the point of agreeing.
"Father, sauce and vinegar and pocket change might pass — bear them a while and the family gets by — but winter is the thing!" Just then someone far behind shouted out at the top of his voice. "It is already mid-autumn; the Double Ninth is almost here, and once it passes the days grow colder and colder... Today I met a group of Pengcheng Liu clansmen who came south years ago. They all said that this is Jiangnan, warmer than north of the Huai, but even here there is ice and snow every few days in winter... Father, with this many of us, what of grain? What of shelter? Is no one to look after us at all?"
No one needed to turn around to know who had come. Liu Cheng knew too.
Liu Huzi, of course.
And hearing his youngest son speak of matters of life and death, the wrinkles on Liu Zhi's face, already deep, deepened further, and for once he had no answer... In truth, if relief from the officials had not been so long in coming, leaving him destitute and at loose ends, he would never have taken up sandal-weaving with these people — nor learned it so well at that.
"Father." Short and sturdy, Liu Huzi hurried over at the sight. "I hear the Grand Commander has returned to Guangling. We must go pay our respects to him and beg some money and grain... best of all, beg an official post."
Old Liu San beside him nodded and nodded: office was always right. Once Ren Gong became an official, would he not rise along with him?
Liu Cheng nodded too. Whichever way it went — striking out on their own, or entering the system — going to the leadership first for resources was always the right move. As for whether anything would go wrong, or whether they would get anything at all — that was another matter.
But Liu Zhi only shook his head. "A mere rankless commoner like me — no office or title, no name, no pure conversation, no classical studies. The Grand Commander holds half the realm in his hand; he has gone back to Guangling to go on preparing the Northern Expedition. On what grounds would he see me?"
But you have to try! If the Grand Commander would not see them, find a commandery governor, ask after a fellow townsman, get some refugee commander who came south a few years earlier to help! This Ren Gong was good in every way — except that he shrank and cowered.
Liu Cheng said none of this aloud; inwardly he was speechless.
"We have to try!" Liu Huzi was growing agitated too, and shouted it right out. "Father, how will you know it cannot be done if we don't try? Are we to sink a little further every day?"
At that, everyone around fell silent.
And this, in truth, was the greatest trouble of this refugee band over the past ten-odd days: nobody was looking after them!
Not that Southern Xuzhou's officials had done nothing. Ren Gong had sent his eldest son south to Jincheng, the seat of Langya Commandery, to request an audience with the local officials — only to be told that the working clerks of the commandery had all been seconded to Guazhou Ferry and Mount Beigu to help take in the new refugees, and that Liu Sheng should come back and wait.
As for the Administrator of Langya — what a joke. The present Administrator of Langya was Yuan Zhi of the Yuan clan of Chen Commandery, descendants of Yuan Huan! His eldest aunt was one Yuan Nühuang, married to Yin Hao, the present Governor of Yangzhou, the very pillar of the court's prestige, the one set to stand in the ring against Huan Wen; his second aunt was Yuan Nüzheng, married to Xie Shang, Governor of Yuzhou and the de facto head of the Xie clan of Chen... and both aunts were the white moonlight — the unattainable beloved — that Grand General Huan had regretted half his life.
And though Administrator Yuan seldom held pure conversation and did not follow Xie An's style, he did like to apply himself to the classics in his leisure. Who would dare disturb that venerable gentleman of barely twenty-three over your thousand-odd refugee households?
As for Guazhou Ferry, some had been unable to resist going to look: the officials there were desperately busy, quite attentive to settling the scattered refugees on the spot; whether the Grand Commander in the city of Guangling could see any of it, no one knew... In any case, no one was minding Ren Gong's band.
When they had first arrived, these refugees had needed no one to organize them; of their own accord they had begun felling trees, putting up fences, gathering firewood and straw, then built privies and dug drainage ditches. Now every one of them was anxious and unsettled; no one cared for these public works any longer — all their thoughts went to hoarding grain, and there had even been quarrels and desertions over it.
But there was truly no help for it. Autumn was well under way; the southern weather was still mild and produce was plentiful, and they were all poor folk by birth with nothing but raw strength in their arms. By gathering, hunting, and fishing they could just barely keep their bellies from going empty. But when winter came — what then?
As if only the sandal-and-mat work group could still keep up that upbeat, forward-driving rhythm.
Small wonder Old Liu San worried that Liu Cheng might jump ship.
Back to the present: pressed to the wall, Liu Ren Gong clutched the half-woven sandal and thought with lowered head for a good while, and in the end could only consent. "How could the Grand Commander be seen so easily? Tomorrow I'll take a few of you lads to Jiangcheng to see Garrison Commander Gao... He is of the Gao clan of Bohai, fled here from Langya only two years ahead of us; back in the day I gave them hospitality on the road. Before we came I made inquiries and learned he had become a garrison commander — that is why I begged that official to settle us here in this Langya commandery close by. We will sound him out about how things stand, and only then go seek out those grandees."
The company could not help but breathe easier.
Liu Cheng, out of his customary curiosity, made a point of drawing Liu Huzi aside to ask about this so-called garrison commander, and only then learned that the man was of course no general — that indeed no formal post of "garrison commander" existed at all. Strictly speaking, that refugee commander surnamed Gao was a detachment commander: a commander of five hundred men who bore his own independent banner and led his troops independently — a military post ordinarily filled by minor gentry or local magnates, and a backbone position in the army at that.
Only, ever since Great Jin moved south, military institutions had been in disarray, and the defense arrangements at Jingkou had a character all their own, built up from the eight garrison posts, eleven fortresses, and thirty-two beacon towers that Minister over the Masses Xi Jian had established along the river after the Su Jun rebellion.
Under such an arrangement, a detachment commander who independently held one garrison post was naturally called "garrison commander" by common consent.
His questions answered, and roughly guessing that this was the backing Liu Ren Gong had counted on in coming south, Liu Cheng did not linger.
He simply helped divide out the sauce and vinegar; helped Old Liu San settle a quarrel between two households over a bundle of rice straw; took the account book and, standing in for the thin-skinned Ren Gong, tactfully took two of the slower weavers in the mat team to task; then had Ren Gong single out and praise the two best weavers, with a little extra firewood by way of reward; did not forget to compliment Ren Gong's own handiwork as exceptionally fine; then took charcoal and entered on a small wooden board, in a script only he could read, the accounts for the sandals and the mats; waited for the other two sons to come back and cadged a meal with them; took up his flute and played the whole company "Orchid Grass"; exchanged earnest bows with Ren Gong and Old Liu San and the rest; and turned back early to his own shed at the rear.
Without lingering in the slightest.
With him gone, the only people left by the fire were a few clan women coaxing their children to sleep, and the whole household of Liu Zhi — Ren Gong. Old Master Liu was a man with a sense of duty, plainly meaning to finish that sandal properly before he slept.
Seeing this, the cousins and nephews went without saying; of the three sons, the eldest, Liu Sheng, and the second, Liu Pei, were steady enough and had nothing to add, while the third, A Hu, chafed and wanted to speak, but with Father already promising to go see Garrison Commander Gao tomorrow he did not know what to say either — and for a time all three brothers simply watched their father go on weaving sandals there.
And then that Old Liu San, of all people, came over again, droning on about the day's affairs.
Ren Gong had been around in his time; after listening a good while he caught the drift. "Third Elder Brother is worried that Liu Cheng will leave?"
Old Liu San nodded.
"And what if he does?" Liu Ren Gong, hugging the mostly finished sandal, seemed genuinely puzzled. "People move toward higher ground, and water flows downward; we are hard-pressed now. You say that branch of the clan has been settled here for years — they cannot lack for houses or grain. What harm if he goes to them?"
"The Pengcheng Liu clan who came two or three years earlier — that must be Liu Agan's family." Liu Huzi cut in suddenly. "Back in the Huai region their house had always stood beneath ours; only because his grandfather had served as Chancellor of Guangling, and held property there, did they remain rich after coming to this side — unlike our family, robbed until nothing remained... They were the very people I ran into today."
Liu Ren Gong froze a moment, then nodded. "No wonder. If it is that family doing the courting, it is not a bad place to land... But I remember — did their line not move to Pei State several generations ago? Liu Cheng's line moved to Qiao Commandery three generations back. As for closeness of kin, I'm afraid they really are the nearer branch?"
"Near? More like the very same branch." Liu Huzi stared fixedly at the fire without moving.
"Young master, I never said Liu Cheng was ungrateful and meant to leave of his own accord — he has not even noticed it himself; it is that family courting him." Old Liu San, hearing how it sounded, hurried to explain. His real intent had been to remind the household to give Liu Cheng better treatment and not let the boy slip away — yet now that it was all spoken aloud, why did it sound as though he had come to lodge a complaint?
"I know what you mean, and I know Liu Cheng is a good lad." Liu Zhi sighed. "Only, Third Elder Brother — we are poor and hard-pressed past bearing ourselves; even if we wished to lift Liu Cheng up, we have nothing to lift him with. If he goes, I am truly glad — it is for his good... How does ingratitude come into it? What kindness have we ever done him?"
With that, Liu Zhi bowed his head lower still and set himself seriously to weaving sandals.
Of the Liu family present, none made a sound — except Liu Huzi, who gave a cold snort.
As for Old Liu San, he only felt the scar at the corner of his mouth begin to ache again, and did not press the matter any further.
Chapter 8