Chapter 2939: Tianjin Wei (18)

Before long, Steward Liu led the party to a quiet pavilion set among willows at the field's edge, its tables and chairs wiped clean and tasteful — nothing extravagant, with the understated grace of a gentry farmstead. The afternoon tea things were already laid out: Yangcun rice cakes, lustrous white and soft, releasing a clean, moist fragrance of rice on the tongue; sugar huoshao, crisp without and yielding within, their sesame paste and brown sugar mellow and rich; beside them, flaky little pastries of two kinds, the zilaihong and the zilaibai, sweet jujube paste at their hearts, melting to nothing in the mouth. Served with freshly roasted local tea, all of it was honest canal-country fare from the reaches of Tianjin Wei — plain, agreeable, carrying the dignity of official hospitality and the spare practical measure of a reclamation farm alike, without a breath of extravagance.

"All local specialties," Han Zhaoxian said, playing host. "The jujube paste, sesame, wheat flour, rice flour, and lard are all the settlement's own produce. Only the tea — the north cannot grow it. That comes from Anhui."

What brewed was Dafang tea scented with jasmine, carried north with the southern teas: the liquor pale and luminous, the jasmine fragrance subtle and contained, the taste of the tea gentle, sweet, and moist, neither bitter nor harsh — best suited to cut the richness of the afternoon pastries and clear the head.

The company took their seats and lifted their cups to drink at leisure. Li Luoyou sipped, nodded slightly, and pronounced his praise: "This jasmine-scented Dafang — fragrant without showiness, mild yet full of flavor — is precisely the elegant household thing for scholars and officials. It wants the preciousness of tribute tea, and it best rewards slow appreciation."

Xu Guangqi too took a slow sip, perfectly at ease. "The canal merchants carry the teas north year upon year. This Dafang is native to southern Anhui; the jasmine comes out of Fujian; the scenting is done here in Tianjin. Clean and moist, it nourishes the body and does no hurt to spleen or stomach. I am old and weak of breath — anything too strong I cannot drink. This one alone suits my frame."

They settled over their tea and pastries, talking idly of crops in the fields and progress in the works. The mood was quiet and mild; but Li Luoyou could see that between Xu Guangqi's brows there still hung something faintly breathless and spent, and he asked softly, with concern: "Your Excellency's years are great, and of late I have often seen you short of breath and wheezing. Is your health holding steady?"

Xu Guangqi raised his cup, sipped lightly, his expression placid, and sighed at his own pace: "I am obliged by your concern. Some years ago this body of mine truly fell into decay — the least exertion brought wheezing and a tight chest; rise and move but a little, and the breath would not come. Thanks to the good Western medicines the Australians sent up from the south, these past six months and more have seen me recovered for the most part — spirit and strength are a good deal easier in me."

He paused. "The imperial physicians and famous doctors I engaged before each read the signs in his own school. One pronounced my lung qi depleted and its power of descent failing, and stood by medicines to fortify the lungs, replenish the qi, secure the root, and calm the wheeze. Another called it weakness of the spleen earth, with phlegm-damp choking the lungs, and would strengthen the spleen, transform the phlegm, regulate the qi, and still the cough. Yet another judged it the waning of kidney qi in old age, the kidneys no longer able to grasp the qi, and would begin from warming the kidneys, grasping the qi, and nourishing the lower origin. Broth after broth of every school was poured in — each bought a brief and partial ease, but none ever reached the root of the illness."

"But the physician from the south diagnoses by a method wholly unlike that of our Middle Kingdom. He does not speak of wind-evils or phlegm-damp; he does not weigh the deficiency and excess of the organs. By observation, listening, and close examination alone, he told me plainly that the seat of my trouble was not the lungs at all: the heart's strength was failing, its qi insufficient, the circulation of the blood powerless, and the breath dragged down in its train — hence the wheeze upon moving, the tightness upon sitting long. Following his prescriptions, the medicine struck the mark at last: the stagnation in my chest and the torment of the wheeze have mostly melted away."

Li Luoyou nodded inwardly as he listened, and his heart filled with the thought: the Australians' medicine is brilliant indeed!

Yet on second thought — the Grand Secretary was already past his threescore and ten, and bore the heavy charge of Grand Coordinator of Tianjin. Reclamation and the breaking of wild land, the founding of works — there was nothing that did not ask his care. He must look to the Calendar Bureau's reform of the calendar as well, and to the debates of the court; even the Church's own business and the comings and goings of gentry brethren claimed his mind and strength. Affairs clung to him on every side; not a day's ease did he know. Good medicines might nurse the body — but how could it bear such wearing away?

At the thought, watching Xu Guangqi — composed in bearing, yet unable to wholly hide the weariness between his brows — Li Luoyou's heart grew heavy on the old man's account, this pillar of the Holy Church. On public grounds and private both, he wished the Grand Secretary would nurse himself well, and live out long years of blessing.

Li Luoyou set down his cup, and his tone was earnest and true:

"Your Excellency, your junior takes the liberty of one word more. You now hold several charges at once, and every single one of them taxes your mind and strength. Good medicine there is, yes — but you are a man of years; by no means should you lay hand to every matter yourself. Henceforth labor the less, quiet the heart, and rest and mend. Only with your body sound can you hold Tianjin and keep command of the whole — and that is the fortune of all living men, and of our brotherhood."

At this point, feeling that the speech had stayed, after all, a shade too much in the vein of courtesy, Li Luoyou leaned slightly forward, and his tone grew far warmer:

"Your Excellency and I serve the same Lord in Heaven; we are brothers within the faith, and ought not to speak like strangers. Whatever command you see fit to lay upon me — public or private, however weighty — so long as it lies within your student's power, I shall undertake it at the cost of ten thousand deaths, and never withdraw a hair's breadth from it."

Xu Guangqi's gaze settled on Li Luoyou, and after a long moment he spoke. "Since you carry such a heart in this, Jizhi, I need no longer keep up the empty courtesies with you." His expression gradually gathered and stilled; his tone was slow and grave. "My own condition I know well enough. When Father Lu brought the new Australian medicines, and I tended myself morning and night, the body indeed mended a good deal. But my qi and blood are in decay, and the years that remain to me are few. A few more years of straining onward — that much I can manage. More than that, and it is hard to say."

As he spoke, his eyes drifted lightly over their surroundings. Steward Liu, quick of wit as ever, took the meaning at once; with the attendant boy beside him he quietly withdrew to serve at a respectful distance, leaving only Han Zhaoxian standing in attendance.

When the others had drawn away, Xu Guangqi lowered his voice and spoke plainly, his look grave: "When I asked you here today, this too was among my considerations."

He paused a moment, his tone open and unflinching: "You will have marked it already. The so-called 'south' is in truth that which court and country name in private whispers — the Kun thieves. The Australians."

That was said outright; what followed must be private and weighty beyond ordinary. Li Luoyou answered at once: "Yes."

"Through the web of the Catholic gentry, I have long been in quiet communication with the Australians of Lingao. Between the two sides the private commerce runs without pause: the machines our Tianjin reclamation uses, the equipment of the workshops, the firearms and munitions wanted for coastal defense and drill — most of it is bought from their hands. Nor shall I hide it from you, Jizhi: in the Zhaoshang and Huifeng firms, which now pass in and out of the ports about Tianjin carrying on the trade of the two oceans, north and south, the Xu family holds shares."

The news startled him somewhat, yet it fell within his reckoning. The Merchants Bureau shipping line in particular — a fair number of the Jiangnan gentry had bought into that; shares held by the Xu family were only to be expected.

"The posture of the court today needs no words of mine — it rots to the very bottom." Xu Guangqi's eyes half closed. "Tossed in wind and rain — say that the last days are come, and it would be no overstatement."

At these words Li Luoyou's heart jolted. Across his mind flashed, unbidden, the story from the Scriptures of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse — war, famine, pestilence, the end of days — scene upon scene shadowing the disorders of the world as it stood, and his chest tightened of itself.

He forced the alarm back down, steadied himself with an effort, and spoke slowly: "Your Excellency's words go too far. The realm is in tumult, true — famine year upon year, roving bandits rising on every hand; the times are disordered indeed. One may only hope the winds and rains turn kindly hereafter, and we slowly wear our way past this hard passage."

He drew a deep breath and held fast to his composure. "More than two thousand years have passed since the Ancestral Dragon first mounted the throne, dynasty rising upon dynasty in succession. The flourishing and decay of a single surname have their seasons; but Hua Xia has never perished, and the Divine Land endures. From this one sees there is a Heaven that watches over us."

Hearing him out, Xu Guangqi's eyes filled with genuine approval. He nodded slowly, his expression calm, a man who saw through the ways of the world.

"Such understanding stands far above the common run of officials. What this old man holds in his heart is the same."

He raised his cup and took a light sip. "From antiquity onward, the succession and decline of dynasties has ever been the standing principle of Heaven's way. It was never the weightiest matter under Heaven."

Then his voice sank, and a deep shadow of worry gathered between his brows. "But the present condition of our dynasty gives true cause for fear. Factional strife without end at court, the people's livelihood withering in the Central Plains; within, the roving bandits; without, the Eastern Captives prying at the frontiers step by step, their appetites swelling by the day. If this devouring of ourselves goes on unchecked, a day will surely come of frontier calamity and overthrow — and I fear we shall tread again the road of Yashan!"

Li Luoyou gave a small shudder, and forced a smile. "Surely it will not come to that... The Eastern Captives are but a paltry chieftain's tribe — wolf-hearted though they be..."

Yet even as he said it he remembered the Jin state of old: no more than a tribe of the Liaodong wilds, and it extinguished the Liao all the same, and came within a hair of extinguishing the Song. And did not today's Eastern Captives proclaim themselves the heirs of those very Jurchens of Jin? Even the style of their state was the same. As for the Australians — say nothing of them: they rose from a single ship and a single county, and now hold the Two Guangs by seizure, their might shaking half the southeast.

"This old man hopes so too — hopes it is but the man of Qi dreading a falling sky," Xu Guangqi said with a sigh. "Yet these years the fortunes of the state have sunk season by season, and though His Majesty harbor the will of a restoration, he can scarcely turn back the decline." Speaking of the reigning Son of Heaven, a complicated feeling entered his tone — expectancy in it, and regret also. "In truth, since his accession the Emperor has labored at governance and greatly longs to accomplish. Only his temper is too hasty, too eager for quick fruition; haste so often defeats itself — and it leaves him easily blinded by the wicked and the fawning, so that great things go undone."

At this point his face filled with the wistfulness of strength falling short of will. "But alas, this old man's years are great, his qi and blood in decay, his strength less with every day that passes. The tangled business of the court long ago passed beyond my grasp; I have no strength left to help His Majesty set the court in order and uphold the altars of state."

He lifted his eyes toward Tianjin. "It was for this very reason that I asked, of my own motion, for Tianjin and the post of Grand Coordinator — to throw the whole of my heart into reclamation and the breaking of land, the founding of works, the casting of cannon and the training of troops. Tianjin stands at the gate of the capital region, a choke point of the first order. What I am doing here is quietly building a firm foundation at the capital's very flank. Should the capital meet with calamity and the court convulse, this place would be the fallback the court may lean on above all — seed-fire kept alive for Hua Xia, a road of retreat kept open for the common people."

"Set beside the reckoning of place and power at court, the wrangling of factions, what matters now is this: to settle the people, to spread the reclamation wide, to learn the new arts, to make firearms, to secure the frontier. That the living of the Central Plains dwell in peace, and that the cap and gown and the written legacy of Hua Xia be held fast — that is the first duty."

"My mind is set on patterning Tianjin after their laws and methods, learning their arts — founding works, training troops, making fast the defenses — carrying forward the Kun affairs. But the stake in this is too great, and the court's suspicion of it runs too deep; it can only proceed in the shadows. As things stand, our line of access rests entirely on Huodong's official channels through Deng-Lai — and those, in the end, sit in plain view. Far too much on display. Given time, some hand will find the handle, and the murmurs and attacks will follow."

Here he looked at Li Luoyou, and his tone carried the weight of an entrustment: "This old man is aged and spent; I stand among the great officials of the frontier, and the official body hampers me sorely — and I bear the charge of the Church besides. Much that is secret and weighty I cannot well appear in person to do, and the roads of officialdom are no longer fit for it. Henceforth, in all that touches the hidden traffic with the Australians — the turning of goods, the moving of silver, the bringing of the right men together — I wish to entrust it to you, with you to wheel and turn at the center of it. Unseen, leaving no shadow — that will be a far safer thing."

(End of chapter)