Chapter 2931: Tianjin Wei (10)

Gazing out over the boundless checkerboard of fields, so brimming with life, Li Luoyou felt a rare gladness rise in his heart. His spirit, worn lean and weary by the battering of one ill report after another these many days, stirred quietly with a thread of hope. The Great Ming was vast beyond measure and rich in goods; able men and capable officials had come in every generation — was not the scene before him the plainest proof of it? So long as court and country, within the temple-halls and out, pulled together with sober hearts and set their hands honestly to the work, then be the crisis never so vast as heaven itself, it might yet be crossed.

He strolled slowly along the bunds, breathing in the clean, damp sweetness of the fields, a joy past suppressing in his chest — like some beast that had endured the long winter and found itself once more basking in the mellow spring light. The young captain and the servants attending him, seeing him thus, could hardly keep their faces straight.

Saoye, seeing his master so carried away, came quickly to his side and murmured: "Master — the Grand Secretary is still waiting."

Only then did Li Luoyou gather himself back; he turned and re-entered the chair.

The chair was borne on another two or three li, and far ahead a dark mass of buildings came into view, banners and standards rising among them. This, Li Luoyou knew, could only be the farm station the Erudite had spoken of.

The station was of no small extent — in very truth a little town. The streets were paved in brick and stone, the houses on either side official buildings of gray brick, every one. Shops stood shoulder to shoulder, trade ran brisk; scholar and farmer, artisan and merchant each followed his calling — a thriving sight altogether. Li Luoyou marveled in silence: no few able men gathered about the Grand Secretary.

When Xu Guangqi had come to Gegu a dozen years and more ago to open his farms, the holding had been a private estate, not an official colony. Li Luoyou had visited the estate of those days himself — a plain, crude manor and nothing more. Its scale and the official colony of today could not be spoken of in the same breath.

The young captain said quietly: "Master Li, we go straight up to the headquarters now. Would your honor care to find a place to change?"

The question put him in mind of it. Xu Guangqi might count as an old acquaintance, a brother in the faith; but the man was a Grand Secretary still, and a governor — a subject raised to the very summit of rank. To wait upon him in plain clothes would be a true discourtesy, and the sort to set tongues wagging.

Being a great merchant, Li Luoyou had not escaped the common custom: he carried a purchased title on his back. Not for vanity — it was more for an amulet, a shield against the bullying of local officials. In the first years of Chongzhen he had contributed a hundred thousand shi of grain toward the coastal defense payroll; at the special memorial of the Grand Secretaries, the Ministry of War, and the Ministry of Revenue, an edict had granted him the title of Right Consultant of a Provincial Administration Commission — a candidate for appointment, exempt from ever taking up the post, with patent of honor and the cap and belt of the fourth rank.

Though it carried no actual office, his dress and insignia equaled the fourth rank: with prefects and above he dealt as an equal, and with governors and governors-general he stood as guest and host. Among merchants who bought rank, this was very nearly the summit. Yet he almost never wore the official robes in daily life — the thing was for status alone — and unless he traveled far afield he did not carry them with him. Coming over from Tianjin this time, in such haste, the matter had never entered his head.

"To tell the truth, young sir — though I hold a post, I have brought no robes."

"That's no bar," said the captain. "May I ask your honor's rank, and whether civil or military? Your servant will go and borrow a set for you."

"Then I must trouble you, young sir." Li Luoyou gave his title. The captain at once sent a man off about it, and before long there was brought back for him a set of fourth-rank civil official's robes, badge of the cloud goose.

When Li Luoyou had finished changing, he bade Saoye take out his visiting card; then he followed the captain up to the headquarters to pay his call.

The governor's field headquarters was set in a roomy private dwelling on the east side of the station. Though it lacked the full form of an official yamen, the dignity before its gate was shortchanged in nothing.

At the fore, timber frames and cloth screens had been rigged into a simple ceremonial gate, and at its center rose a great crimson banner inscribed "Governor of Tianjin and Adjacent Places, Superintendent of Military Farming, Troop Training, and Coastal Defense." To either side stood a pair of placards of black and gold: "Give Way" and "Silence." Behind these came flying-tiger banners and way-clearing banners, four of each; gold melons, knobbed maces, and ceremonial swords were laid out each in its order; a single red-gauze umbrella spread beside the door — display without swagger, pomp without excess.

Before the gate stood two ranks of the governor's own guards — short jackets belted tight, saber and spear at their waists, keen and capable of face, with none of the slackness of common garrison troops. A few blue-gowned runners stood in attendance with their staves, hands low and breath held, no bawling or shouting among them. At one side of the gate a scribe's table had been set, and the messengers coming and going with papers on the farms, the river works, and the coastal defenses passed without end — and all of it in perfect order.

For all the insignia and dignity at the gate, there was no strings and flutes, no drummed parade, no fussy ceremony; through everything breathed a spirit of discipline and practical work — altogether in keeping with Grand Secretary Xu's lifelong plainness.

Seeing the character of the place from afar, Li Luoyou felt his heart settle by degrees: here was a former Grand Secretary who had made his standing upon learning, upon husbandry, upon engines of war — posted out as a governor, he remained a man who weighed substance and held show at nothing.

Li Luoyou had changed, for today, into the ordinary dress of a fourth-rank civil official: a Zhongjing cap upon his head, a round-collared robe of dark blue bearing the cloud-goose badge, a belt of black horn at his waist, black boots with white soles upon his feet.

Reaching the gate, he presented a name card prepared for the occasion, inscribed with his title: "Candidate Right Consultant of a Provincial Administration Commission." The doorkeeper had been forewarned; seeing the card, he dared not dawdle, but went in at once to announce him.

Before long word came from within: "Consultant Li is asked to come in."

Entering the main hall, Li Luoyou lifted his eyes. The old man upon the dais was some seventy years of age, not tall, very slightly stooped, wearing a half-worn dark-blue scholar's robe and a Dongpo cap, a bamboo staff in his hand. His face was gaunt, the cheekbones high, the cheeks sunken; the skin was like an orange dried in the wind, seamed with deep wrinkles. But the eyes had no age in them at all — the black and white clear-cut, the gaze burning bright.

His coloring was poor, a pallor that was not health, his lips faintly blue. His chest rose and fell, as though something were caught and lodged within it.

Li Luoyou knew him at a glance — Xu Guangqi.

Years had passed since they last met, and the years had cut their marks deep into the old Grand Secretary's frame; but those eyes, that bearing — no man alive could counterfeit them.

Two seats had been set below the dais. The host's, at the center and upper end, was Xu Guangqi's place; the guest's seat on the west stood a degree lower, yet the ceremony was still that of guest and host meeting as equals — he was not to be treated as a subordinate. Holders of purchased rank from the fourth rank upward counted as "gentry of ministerial standing"; with governors and governors-general they observed only the rites of a guest and did not belong among the bowing retinue. Li Luoyou's consultantship-in-waiting was of the junior fourth rank, and on an occasion such as this he naturally owed no underling's obeisance.

Li Luoyou stepped forward, set his dress in order, and with the deepest respect performed one bow and three kowtows, saying as he did:

"Your junior Li Luoyou pays his respects to Governor Xu."

Xu Guangqi rose and made a motion as of raising him up, saying with a smile:

"Master Li, no need for so much ceremony. Please be seated."

His voice was not loud and ran a little hoarse, as though something were lodged in his throat; but the tone was mild, with an elder's kindness in it. A small warmth moved in Li Luoyou's heart; he bowed once more, then settled himself sideways into the guest's seat on the west.

When the servants had brought the tea, Li Luoyou half rose, touched his cup in courtesy, and spoke first: "Venerable Sir, holding Tianjin as your charge, putting in order the farms and the coastal defense — and now coming yourself to Gegu to inspect: this junior, seeing at your side fields fat and spreading, alive and green in every quarter, finds his heart filled past bearing with admiration."

It was a courtesy — and it was also true. His round of Gegu the day before had shown him, with his own eyes, those paddies and cotton fields, those channels and dikes, the busy colonists and the drilling soldiers; and the admiration in his heart had been real and pressing.

Xu Guangqi nodded slightly, lifted his cup, sipped, set it down, and only then said, unhurried: "It is nothing more than doing what lies in man's power. The alkali lands of Tianjin were not reclaimed by this old man alone. Wang Yingjiao broke the ground in those years; I have merely carried the work forward. These years past I have had the help of old farm-men such as Sun Biao and Han Jingbo; Chen Yujie keeps his eye on the cannon bureau; Circuit Intendant Jiang holds up the defense — only so has today's little something been made."

As he spoke he coughed twice, pressed a handkerchief to his lips, and then went on:

"Master Li, you could not have come better. Here at Gegu — the farms, the salt-boiling, the river traffic — all of it leans upon the help of wealthy merchants and great houses. You have traded long in Tianjin, your news from south and north runs quick; you have given grain for the army's pay before, to the great benefit of this locality. There are several matters of practical business that I wish to take up with you."

Li Luoyou rose quickly in his seat: "Whatever the Venerable Sir commands — so far as my strength can reach, there can be no thought of refusal."

His tone was earnest, without a hair of polite pretense. Xu Guangqi regarded him, a shade of approval entering his eyes; he nodded, lifted his cup, and sipped again.

"This room is no place for talk. Come with me to the study to discuss matters — it is quieter there. Follow me." He paused, glanced down at the half-worn dark-blue robe upon his own body, and added: "Neither of us need stand on empty ceremony. You and I are old friends, not officials across a hall."

Li Luoyou rose at once and saluted with clasped hands: "How should I dare do otherwise?"

Xu Guangqi was already moving toward the rear hall. He did not walk fast, one hand against the wall, his steps faintly unsteady. Two boy servants hurried over to support him.

The two of them passed through a small door and along a short corridor, and came to a little study.

The study was small — two rooms, one behind the other. The outer room held a single bookcase, heaped with books and draft papers; in the inner room stood a writing desk and two round-backed armchairs, and against the wall a small couch with a thin quilt folded upon it — plainly the place where Xu Guangqi took his rest from day to day. On the desk lay several official papers, held down by an inkstone of She stone, the ink in it not yet dry; on the brush-rest lay a small-script brush, its tip still moist.

The window, of the kind that lifts and props half open, stood half raised; the wind through it carried the green breath of the fields and, faint and far off, the smell of the sea. In the courtyard grew a few clusters of lilac, their leaves rustling in the wind, lending the little study an added quiet and seclusion.

"Sit." Xu Guangqi indicated the armchair by the window and lowered himself into the other chair behind the desk, letting out a long breath, as though those few steps had already wearied him.

He leaned back, shut his eyes a moment, opened them again; his gaze settled on Li Luoyou's face, his expression far more at ease than it had been in the main hall, and with more of a man opening his very heart about him.

"There are no outsiders here," he said slowly. "Master Li — what was said just now was for the room. Now this old man has a few words of true heart for you."

This was to be speech from the innermost breast. Li Luoyou's heart tightened.

Twenty years and more of acquaintance stood between them, and Li had transacted many things on his behalf; yet strictly speaking, Li Luoyou was not Xu Guangqi's "own man." Their "friendship" rested, rather, upon their shared communion as brethren of the faith.

"Pray let the Grand Secretary speak plainly."

"Jizhi, on your road into Gegu — what did you see, and what did you think of it?"

Li Luoyou gave a small start: there was something of self-regard in the question — the Grand Secretary had always been a modest man, never one to boast his own works. At once he composed his face and answered: "The fields are laid true and orderly, and tended with the greatest care; the common people look contented and at peace; the streets and lanes, the houses and buildings, all stand neat and in order."

(End of chapter)