Ding estate prison - Shan

 

That last kick has broken my forearm.  Clenching my teeth, I roll painfully onto my back and heave myself into a sitting position.  My hands are still tied, but foolishly, the Dings haven’t searched me.  I have a knife in my boot.  My left arm and hand are useless, but I fish the knife out with my right hand and, reversing it, laboriously saw through the rope on my wrists.  The pain of the broken bone’s making me dizzy.  I have to stop and wait till my head clears.  I need something to hold the bone steady.  There’s nothing I can use as a splint.  Loosening my sash, I wind it round my forearm as tightly as I can, sweat pouring off my face.  It’s better than nothing.  Carefully, I shuffle backwards till I’m leaning against the wall.  My whole body’s shivering in reaction to the violence of the beatings.

This is not a good situation.

I have to try and ignore the grinding pain in my arm and my growing weakness and think what to do.  I’ve never been in this situation before, but Shao Ru once spent three months in prison, in circumstances about which he’s never been keen to talk.  I hear his voice in my head.

Don’t provoke your captors.  They’ll only beat you up and you’ll end up wasting strength and getting injured.

Well, I blew that one, Ah-Ru, I think ruefully.  Couldn’t help it, after what he said about Jinhai.

Never mind, I hear him reply in my head.  You’ll remember next time.  Take stock of your situation.  What kind of cell is it?  Wooden bars are good – you can saw through them.  Iron bars are bad news.  What kind of lock is there on the door?  Look round for something you can use as a weapon.  Sticks, stones, even chairs and table legs.

I look round.  There’s nothing in the cell at all except a filthy sanitation bucket.  But I have a knife.  The bars are wood.  The door has an iron padlock.

How many guards are there?  How often do they change shift?  Try and talk to them, use humour, get them on your side if you can.  Eat and drink everything they give you, however crappy it is.  There’s no point starving to death.  I remember there was one guard who used to piss in our water, but the guy I was banged up with came from some desert somewhere and he said his people drank urine when they didn’t have water.  Drinking somebody else’s urine probably isn’t going to kill you.  Thirst will.

I remember Shao Ru’s cheerful expression when he told us this, and Liang Zhou’s serious face considering the matter from a medical point of view.

Now and then the porridge had insects in it but this desert guy used to eat them too.  Said that in the desert you eat anything you can get.  Can’t say I got a taste for it, though.

 I’ve never really been sure he meant this, but I remember his laughter and Liang Zhou’s pursed lips.

Oh Gods, I miss you guys so much.

A door bangs open and heavy steps approach.  I hastily shove the cut ropes out of sight.  There’s one guard, carrying a jug and bowl.  He bends down and pushes them through a square hole cut in the bars at ground level.  He leaves without a word.

Nobody’s pissed in the water, as far as I can tell.  The bowl contains porridge, with no insects.  There’s no spoon, so I have to eat it with my fingers.  All the same, it’s welcome.  They’re not going to starve me.  Then I remember what Ding Lim said.  If you kill him, we won’t be able to make a deal.

What kind of deal are they thinking about?  It can’t just be to get the reward because my head would be enough for that.  They want to hand me over alive.  What for?  Are they still hoping to claw back the kingship of Qiu?  I doubt if I’m worth that much to the Imperial court but the Dings may be blinded by their ambition.  In any case, I might have some time while they negotiate their deal.

Time passes.  The pain increases all over my body and my mind starts to wander.  It’s cold in the prison and damp comes up from the earthen floor.  Darkness falls.

Night’s the worst time.  It’s cold and the dark seems to last forever.  You start worrying that daybreak will never come.

But it does.  I’m jerked out of my half-dreams by rattling and the sound of a voice saying, “He doesn’t look too good.  Get that woman of my sister’s to take a look at him.  He’d better be in good shape by the time we get back.”

Ding Lim, I think, dazedly.  Ding Bao would have come in and kicked me again.

Where are they going?

A voice says, ”Breakfast,” and I turn my head to see that food has been shoved through the bars again.  I have to crawl to get to it because my legs have no strength.  I can barely swallow the coarse porridge.  My head’s so bad that I need to lie down, though there’s only bare earth to lie on.

If this goes on, I’m going to die here.

My thoughts are wandering again when I suddenly hear more rattling and then a sharp woman’s voice, “Fetch a bucket of water!”

The voice sounds familiar and I think I must be hallucinating.  But then I’m lifted into a sitting position and the voice, much nearer now, says softly, “Liao Shan!”

I open my eyes.

It’s Lady Han.

“Can you hear me?” she says, still in that soft voice.  I blink, momentarily incapable of nodding my head.

“We haven’t much time till the guard gets back.  The Dings are leaving today for Qiu City.  I’ll get you out of here.  This man,” she glances to the side, “Is my servant, Tong.  He’s mute, but he understands everything.  He’ll come for you.  Do you understand?”

I manage a nod this time.

“Here’s your water, Lady,” says the rough voice of the guard.  He pushes a bucket through the hole and Tong picks it up.  He’s the largest man I’ve ever seen, a good head taller than I am, built like a wrestler.  There’s some Tibetan in his features and his head’s completely shaven.  He stares at me impassively, his arms folded across his chest.

Lady Han’s dressed like a high-ranking woman servant.  She has a medicine box with her.  As she sets about the job of cleaning me up, unutterable relief sweeps over me.  My brain starts to function again.  She must have come here with Lady Ding.  Hiding in plain sight:  how typical of this clever woman.  So the Dings are going to Qiu City?  My guess can’t be far wrong.  They’re going to negotiate with whoever’s in charge there now:  my life against the throne for their nephew.

“The arm?” Lady Han asks, her voice neutral.

“Broken.”

She produces a pill, which I swallow.  “For the pain,” she says.  Then she starts to unwind the sash and I set my teeth, knowing that the next few minutes are going to be extremely unpleasant.  In fact, despite the pill, the pain exceeds my expectations and I have trouble restraining a groan.  But Lady Han’s deft and professional.  In a mercifully short time, the arm’s splinted, bandaged and placed in a sling.

“Thank you,” I mutter and she nods. 

They leave without ceremony.  I hear her say to the guard.  “Feed him well.  Sir Ding will be very angry if anything happens to him.”

“Yes Lady,” the guard replies, bowing.

Once it starts to work, the pill's very effective.  I doze, unaware of time passing.  At noon, I get a bowl of meat soup in addition to the porridge and I’m given the same in the evening.  Later a horse-blanket is shoved through the bars.  It’s smelly and covered in hairs, but it keeps off the worst of the cold and damp.  The drug’s worn off by now, but I’m definitely in less pain.  However, I’m running a fever, the symptoms familiar from the past.  Last time, I had Jinhai to look after me.  The night’s cold and unforgiving again.  In the morning, my body’s stiff from damp and inaction.  I try to get up and move around, but dizziness forces me to abandon the attempt.  This is the third day since my capture.

Later, Tong comes in to check my wounds.  He gives me another pill.  At the same time he presses a small scrap of paper into my hand.  When the guard’s gone, I unfold it with some difficulty.  There are two words on it. 

Tomorrow night.

I don’t know what’s in those pills, but after a while, I’m floating.  The pain recedes.  I float in and out of dreams, coming back to reality now and then.  Another night passes.  Another day dawns.  Another pill appears.  This time I don’t want to take it, but there’s no arguing with Tong in my present state.  I’m as weak as a mouse.  He opens my jaw and pops the pill in, holding my mouth closed till I’ve swallowed it.  He then pats me approvingly on the cheek.

How can I escape in this state?  Then it occurs to me that perhaps the idea actually is to keep me in this state.  What’s Lady Han planning?  To transport me like a parcel?

As it turns out, that’s exactly it.  A short time after dark, I dimly hear shouts of alarm outside, together with the sound of feet stampeding to and fro.  I hear a door open some distance away, followed by footsteps.  Tong appears, carrying something over his shoulder.  He opens the cell door and dumps his burden on the ground.  It’s a body, dressed in clothes similar to mine, wrapped in sacking.  He arranges the body in a sleeping posture and pulls the horse blanket over it.  Then he turns to me.  He bundles me up in the sacking, bends and lifts me in his arms as if I were a child, taking care to avoid my broken arm.  He smells strongly of sweat.  He walks down the prison corridor to a back exit and pushes it ajar with his foot.  There’s a smell of smoke in the air outside.  The panicky shouting’s clear and distinct, along with someone yelling orders, but I can’t see what’s going on. 

Tong lays me down in a hand-cart and starts shoveling stuff over me.  As it comes up closer to my face, my nose informs me that I’m being covered in straw and horse-dung.  This must be the cart they use when they muck out the stables.  There’s absolutely nothing I can do except try and make sure none of it goes in my mouth. 

I hear Tong give a grunt of satisfaction.  After a brief interval, the cart begins to move.  We proceed at a steady pace for some time, while the disturbance and noise die away behind us.  Then Tong picks up speed, till we’re bowling at a fair old pace along what seems to be a smooth road. 

Suddenly we stop.  The straw and dung are pushed aside and I’m pulled out by my feet, unwrapped, lifted and deposited on another hard wooden floor.  I hear Lady Han’s voice giving an order.  Horses whicker softly.  We start to move again.  Freed from the smell of horse-dung, I take a deep breath of fragrant night air.  Above me are stars and a sickle moon.  As my eyes get used to the dark, I realize that I’m not alone in the cart.  I can just about make out the shape of a woman clutching a child, huddled in one corner.  Her eyes shine in the starlight.  Not Lady Han, surely?  No, my addled brain finally gets there.  It must be Lady Ding and her son.  Damn it, Lady Han’s made a clean sweep.  If I had the energy, I’d be chuckling at her sheer brass-neck.

I have no idea how long we travel, but it’s near dawn when we come to a halt.  I can’t see much, but there’s nothing wrong with my ears.  I hear running water.  Lady Ding scrambles out of the cart and Tong picks up the child, who seems to be comatose.  They’ve probably drugged him too.  Then it’s my turn.  Tong carries me for a short distance and dumps me down, only now there’s something soft underneath me and my head’s resting on a pillow.  We’re on a boat, which is rocking gently.  Water’s slapping against the sides.  Again I hear Lady Han’s voice issuing orders.  A few minutes later, we lurch and get under way.

Lady Han bends over me, holding a cup to my mouth.  She‘s dressed in black, but her face is white in the growing light.

“Not another pill,” I murmur.

“No,” From her voice, I can tell she’s smiling.  “Only water.  Rest now.  We’ve got a long way to go.”

The next time I wake, there’s broad daylight.  We’re in a very small boat, all crammed together under an awning.  Lady Ding and her son are asleep next to me.  Lady Han’s sitting at our feet, her eyes closed, apparently meditating.  Beyond her, I can see the figure of a man working a long-handled paddle.  It’s raining a little, the drops pattering on the awning.

I struggle into a sitting position and Lady Han opens her eyes.

“Um – I need to ….” I say, indicating the exterior.

“Do you need help?” she asks, matter-of-factly.

“I think I can manage, thank you.”

My legs feel like stalks of celery, but I manage to get up and stagger to the stern of the boat to do what I need to do.  The boatman nods and then averts his eyes politely.  We’re on a river, small but swollen with fast-running snow-melt.  The current’s carrying us downstream at a reassuringly fast rate.  There’s no sun, no way to tell in which direction we’re headed.

I go back inside and sit with a sigh of relief.

“How are you feeling?” Lady Han asks, very quietly.

“Weak.  Feverish.  But a whole lot better for being out of there.  Where are we going?”

“My estate on Green Lake.  This river flows into the lake.  We’ll transfer to another boat to get across.”

“A very smooth operation.  How did you do it?”

She smiles.  “I have you to thank.  I needed to get the Ding brothers out of the way and your capture provided that opportunity.  Discipline gets lax when they’re not there, so it was easy to create a diversion.  Tong and I set fire to the house, the storehouses and the prison.  The rest was simple, just a question of arranging transport.”

“Where’s Tong?”

“He’s going the long way round, with the horses.  You couldn’t see, of course, but the horses drawing the cart were yours.  They’ll take a little longer to get to the estate.”

Swift and Arrow.  She’s thought of everything.  I close my eyes, feeling emotion well up. 

“I don’t know how to thank you.  You’ve saved my life.”

She smiles.  “I’m repaying a debt.  By taking Qiu City, you enabled Ding Zemin and her son to escape from that monster Wang Meng.  Now rest.  We’ll have plenty of time to talk.”

The quiet pattering of the rain makes it easy to fall asleep again.

We reach the mouth of the river at the end of the afternoon, and tie up at a small landing stage where a lake-boat’s moored.  The lake’s vast, stretching into the misty distance.  Now I know where we are, I realize with relief that we’re heading east, in the same direction as Jinhai.  I was afraid I’d be taken miles out of my way, but as it turns out, this isn’t the case.   In the last daylight, we transfer to the lake-boat, where there’s separate accommodation for the women and for me, and a small galley from which the smell of food’s rising.  We’ve had nothing to eat all day, so this is very welcome.  In fact, we’ve all travelled in the clothes we stand up in, with no baggage at all.

We can’t set off in the dark, so we remain moored till dawn.  I don’t fall asleep for a long while, listening to the soft sound of women’s voices in the compartment next door.  They sound happy.  So Lady Han and Ding Zemin…..?  Well, why not?  They’ve known each other for months, ever since Lady Han began to work in Qiu Palace.  She must have provided comfort and support for the frightened woman trapped in the nightmare of Wang Meng’s court.  A nightmare that could have trapped Jinhai too.

Where are you, little fox?  I love you.  I want you so much.

I’m deeply uneasy about him being in the company of a person like Lang Huo.  With this broken arm, it may be weeks before I can travel or defend myself or anyone else.  I’ll have to get news somehow.  Lady Han will have her ways and means, that’s for sure.  I wonder what this estate is that she mentioned.  Finally, I sleep.