What’s this?

“My mother?” exclaims the Prince.  ”Did you know my mother?”

Lord Zhao has still not quite regained command over himself.  “I – I – forgive me, I shouldn’t have blurted it out like this, without warning.”

The Prince’s voice is urgent.   “Please tell me, my Lord.  Did you know her?”

“Yes, I knew her very well.  We were to have been married.”

The occasion has taken a totally unexpected turn.  This kind of confidence is unprecedented.  We don’t quite know what to do, but Zhao Zhan saves the situation by coming in with wine and inviting us to sit.  More servants appear with food.  The general bustle allows Lord Zhao to regain his composure.  The Prince is clearly agitated, as well he might be.  As the servants go out, I say, “Might we ask you to enlighten us, my Lord?”

“Yes, indeed.  I apologize for my reaction.  I was unprepared.”  Lord Zhao’s still looking at the Prince as if he can’t quite believe it.   “But I’m forgetting my obligations as host.  Please, eat.”

Embarrassingly, I’m the only one to pick up my chopsticks.  I notice the Prince’s hands are trembling.

“You may have heard the story,” Lord Zhao begins.  “Your mother and I met as children.  We were the same age and our family houses were next to one another in the capital.  General Liu was away at the wars for much of the time and Ah-Lan did very much as she pleased.  One day I escaped from my tutor and hid in the garden.  Ah-Lan spotted me from the wall and we got talking.  Next day she climbed over the wall and brought me pastries.”

The Prince is listening intently, ignoring the food and the full wine-cup in front of him.

Lord Zhao smiles reminiscently.  “My parents were very strict and didn’t allow me sweets.  After that we met up almost every day in an old pigeon house on my parents’ property.  Ah-Lan was clever and well-read.  We had many interests in common.  I was being educated to take the state examinations and she helped me with my studies.  She made my dreary life bearable.”

Here’s a man who’s obsessively private, about whom almost nothing is known.  Why is he telling us all this?

“General Liu came back from the borders badly injured and Ah-Lan started to study medicine so she could care for him.  Then when I was fifteen, my parents sent me away for two years to prepare for the examinations.  When I got back, she was the most sought-after beauty in the capital.  She’d turned down dozens of proposals.”

He pauses and shakes his head.  “It’s difficult to describe how beautiful she was.  You couldn’t quite believe your eyes.  My parents were nagging me to get married, and she was the only woman I wanted to share my life with.  And she said she’d been waiting for me to come home because I was the only man she wanted as a husband.  There wasn’t anything standing in the way.  My family was delighted because the General was a national hero and his daughter a notable catch.  So we were betrothed and the wedding was to take place after I’d taken the examination.”

The Prince picks up his wine-cup and empties it in one go.  A servant appears to refill it.  I’m feeling concerned and not a little embarrassed.  It may be a relief to Lord Zhao to unburden himself, but has he thought about how this will affect the Prince?

Lord Zhao sighs.  “I came second in the examination.  My career was assured.  And then you probably know what happened.  The Emperor saw Ah-Lan and ordered her into the Palace.  Ah-Lan and her father decided to defy the order.  The General had many friends on the borders, so they were going to make a dash north, hoping to get out of the Empire before the Emperor caught them.  Ah-Lan told me to stay because of my career and my family, but I couldn’t let her go.  I insisted on going with them.  But we were betrayed before we’d even left the capital.”

“What happened then?” the Prince asks, his voice husky with emotion.

Lord Zhao raises two fingers to the bridge of his nose and pinches it.  “Ah-Lan bargained with the Emperor for our lives.  She offered to enter the harem willingly if the Emperor guaranteed not to execute her father and me, or my family.  Otherwise, she said she would kill herself.  The Emperor agreed.  She was taken into the harem.  The General, my family and I were all exiled.  I was sent out here, but the Emperor wanted his revenge so the guards broke my legs and abandoned me in the wilderness.”

“How did you survive?”

“Zhao Zhan rescued me, quite by chance.  I lived with his tribe for a while and got to know them well.  It seemed to me there were trading opportunities, so gradually, he and I built up a business, firstly through contacts in Border Town and then directly with the capital.  We built this house and helped the villagers improve their crops.  I still had a few friends in the capital, mostly fellow-scholars, and one or two of them invested in the business.  And so here we are.”  He looks at the Prince.  “How old were you when your mother died?”

“Ten.”

“And what was her life like, there?”

“From what I was told, the Emperor adored her to begin with and treated her with great favour.  She very quickly became pregnant and I was born in the New Year after she first went into the harem.  The maids told me I was born a couple of weeks early and my mother was ill for a long time afterwards.  Then – then….” 

My fingers clench.  I know how difficult this is for him.  He takes a gulp of wine.  “The Empress was jealous.  One of her servants threw acid in my mother’s face.”

Lord Zhao’s hand goes up to his eyes. 

The Prince continues, “After that she lost the Emperor’s favour and her life became very hard.  But I never heard her complain.  Her maids told me that the only time she cried was when her father died, but I was too young to remember.”

“How  - how did she die?”

“It was a chill.  The Empress made us kneel in the rain for half a day because of some imagined insult and we both fell ill.  We didn’t have any medicine and she was weak because – because she used to give me her food.  The Palace servants cheated us out of our allowance and we didn’t have much.”

There’s a very welcome diversion as the servants come in with more food, under the direction of Zhao Zhan.  He casts an anxious and upset look at his master and I wonder suddenly if he’s interrupted deliberately.  I take the opportunity to ask a few intelligent questions about the improvements Lord Zhao’s made, and to my relief the conversation becomes more normal.  We eat.  The Prince is uncharacteristically silent, but I talk about our journey and Lord Zhao listens with the appearance of interest.  But from time to time, his gaze strays thirstily to the Prince’s face. 

A servant approaches to fill our wine cups again.  The Prince’s face is flushed.  He’s not used to drinking.  I lift a warning finger unobtrusively and the servant takes the hint and moves off.  It’s time to end the evening, since Lord Zhao’s beginning to look tired, as well he might after his emotional revelations.  I have private business with him, which will have to wait till tomorrow.  As I make our excuses and we rise to leave, he says, ”There are many things still to discuss, so I'd be honoured if you would spend the night under my humble roof.  We may resume our conversation in the morning.  I’ll have a message sent to your camp.”

It’s a sensible offer, so I accept, imagining Shao Ru’s reaction when he hears.   I just hope he doesn't send a rescue party.  We retire in good order, but as we leave the dining room, the Prince stumbles and bumps into me.  I put a hand under his arm to steer him, but I can see that he’s drunker than I thought.  I curse myself.  I should have noticed before.  In the guest-room, I help him lie down, light a candle and then come back and begin to undo his sash.  His eyes are closed, but as I start to take off his robe, they open and look straight into mine.

In the candlelight, his eyes are hazy, partly with alcohol, but partly with something more veiled, less easily identifiable.  His skin’s flushed pink and his soft lips are parted, showing a glimpse of white teeth.  He’s drunk, he’s inexperienced and he’s in my charge, but it still takes a heroic effort not to crush him in my arms and kiss him till he passes out.  I abandon the attempt to undress him, bundle him into bed and cover him with the quilt.  He turns on his side and falls asleep immediately.

My own body has reacted, inevitably.  I throw off my robe and march down to the bathing pool.   Having dealt with my own arousal, I immerse myself in the water, thoughts whirling.  I’m deeply disturbed, and not just by Lord Zhao’s extraordinary confession.  Since Liang Zhou put an end to the Prince’s evening visits to my tent, I’ve been missing those quiet moments alone with him at the end of the day.  As well as ministering to my sore and battered body, the Prince has had a soothing influence on my tired mind.  I can’t quite explain how, but I’ve felt cared for in a way I haven’t experienced since I was a child.  But I didn’t interfere with Liang Zhou’s decision to put an end to it.  We didn’t discuss it, but it’s clear that when he came into the tent that time, he sensed something that he couldn’t quite understand and felt that something needed to be done. 

Then there was that incident during the hunting trip.  There’s very little difference between a gasp of pain and a gasp of desire.  And was it desire that I saw in his eyes tonight?  My feelings for this person are becoming unmanageable.  I want him.  I want him beside me, I want him in my bed, I want to take care of him for our whole lives.   Is it possible that he also wants me?

But even if he does and it’s not just the wine talking, as things stand there’s nothing I can do about it.