After a brief rest, Pei Shaohuai changed into a fresh set of official robes and made his way to the palace for the audience.
Before setting out, feeling it would be somewhat awkward to arrive empty-handed, he retrieved from among his traveling effects a pristine white porcelain teacup and had Chang Zhou find a small wooden box to pack it in, then tied a length of cord around it.
Pei Shaohuai set off carrying this rather modest gift in one hand.
His thinking was: an Emperor has everything at his disposal, and the Imperial study likely contained more treasures than one could count — what need had he of anything Pei Shaohuai might bring? Something token and perfunctory would do well enough. Besides, the first year of open maritime trade in Shuang’an Prefecture had delivered a million silver taels to the Imperial treasury — now that was a truly worthy gift.
The white porcelain was a specialty of Dehua in Fujian, its glaze a white tinged with faint blue — a fitting symbol of purity and clarity.
It had been several years since he had last entered the palace. Pei Shaohuai took a wrong turning and wandered down two extra corridors before finally finding his way to the gates of the Qianqing Palace.
The afternoon sun slanted in through the windows of the Imperial study, casting a layer of golden light over everything within.
“Your servant prostrates himself before Your Majesty, and wishes His Majesty the fullness of good health.”
“Boyuan — please rise, please rise.” The Emperor spoke warmly, his gaze falling upon the small wooden box in Pei Shaohuai’s hand. A look of pleased surprise crossed his face. “Boyuan has even brought a gift — let me see what fine thing it might be.”
Chief Eunuch Xiao quickly took the box and presented it to the Emperor. When it was opened, within lay a tea cup white from rim to base, like a cap of snow.
The cup was smooth and finely made, the craftsmanship by no means ordinary — yet set among the other objects of the Imperial study, it appeared frankly plain and unremarkable.
The Emperor, however, was delighted. He praised it lavishly: “Simplicity over elaboration, a return to the unadorned — still Boyuan knows my mind best. As I grow older, I find I appreciate these plain, understated things more and more — they have a quality all their own. Excellent, excellent.” He was genuinely pleased with the white porcelain teacup.
Beside the Imperial study, a chess table had already been set in readiness. The Emperor instructed Chief Eunuch Xiao to close the doors and receive no visitors, and then settled in for a quiet game with Pei Shaohuai.
Chief Eunuch Xiao brought tea. He served it in cups decorated with blue and white doucai patterns of birds amid plum blossoms — the swallows and branches vivid with life.
The Emperor had just reached for his cup when he drew his hand back and said: “Change mine for the white cup Boyuan brought.”
“How careless of this old servant!” Chief Eunuch Xiao said with a smile. “I will see to it right away.”
When the fresh tea was brought in the new cup, the Emperor lifted it with visible contentment and took a sip. “My white cup paired with my white pieces — a perfect match.”
Pei Shaohuai sat cradling his blue and white doucai teacup, studying the scene before him with a sinking feeling. He sank into thought — the teacup he had picked up on his way out the door, on a passing whim, had somehow landed exactly right. The Emperor appeared to genuinely intend to keep it in regular use. Officials came and went through the Imperial study daily, and they would all notice this particular cup… He resolved that the moment he was home, he must hide away the remaining seven cups in the set.
“Boyuan — what are you thinking? You seem quite far away.” The Emperor, seeing Pei Shaohuai sitting motionless with his teacup, asked the question.
“Nothing — nothing at all,” Pei Shaohuai deflected. “I simply have not played chess in some time, and find myself a little slow.”
“Then the two of us must play to our hearts’ content today.” Though the Emperor was past fifty, accustomed to receiving everyone with imperial gravity, at this moment he wore the expression of a man eager to demonstrate what he was made of.
Pieces scattered black and white across the grid — the outcome of the game, in the end, was nothing more than sport.
The slanting afternoon light grew longer and longer across the floor. Emperor and minister played their chess, and as they played, they spoke — of matters in court, of the opening of maritime trade — discussing affairs of state with the ease of old friends exchanging domestic news. Time slipped by without notice.
Halfway through the game, the Emperor held a piece suspended in thought for a long moment, then remarked: “Boyuan, three years have passed — and your chess has not improved in the slightest.”
Pei Shaohuai blinked. He looked down at the board, where black and white pieces stood in something very close to equilibrium. After a moment’s hesitation, he spoke nonetheless: “Your Majesty — if I may say — the same might be said of you.”
The Emperor broke into open, hearty laughter. “This is precisely what I value in you — that directness, unbowed by rank or power.”
The hour was growing late. Chief Eunuch Xiao had stepped away to see about the evening meal, leaving the two men alone in the Imperial study. Pei Shaohuai raised the matter himself: “Your Majesty must have summoned me with some urgency, and there are other matters to be attended to, I assume?”
The Emperor nodded and began by acknowledging Pei Shaohuai’s accomplishments in Fujian: “The hardships of opening the sea routes, the far-reaching nature of what was achieved — I understand it all, and these past years have been demanding for you and Yan Chengzhao both.”
The Emperor set down the piece he had been holding and left the game paused, then continued: “You are sharp-minded, and you have both nerve and judgment. I imagine you have already drawn certain conclusions from the position I have appointed you to.”
“Does Your Majesty wish to use the Capital Evaluation as an opportunity to bring order to the official ranks of both capitals?” Pei Shaohuai ventured.
He had only just returned to the capital and was still catching up with events; much remained for him to work through, and this was no more than a rough conjecture.
“Precisely.” The Emperor said. “Last year, Master Lou passed away. Before the end, he had this piece of calligraphy brought back to the capital and presented to me.” The Emperor gestured toward a piece of calligraphy mounted on the wall of the Imperial study.
The Emperor’s use of the honorific “Master Lou” for Lou Yuxing was telling — the man was gone, the affair was over, and the Emperor was remembering a debt of feeling from before his ascension to the throne.
The calligraphy read: “When the ruler values integrity, upright men will stand before him; when the ruler values profit, men who deal in reputation will cluster at his side” — taken from the Guanzi, Chuan Cheng – Chapter on the Seven Ministers and Seven Rulers, admonishing a sovereign to employ honest officials and to be wary of petty men.
When the Emperor had ascended the throne, Lou Yuxing had presented him with this calligraphy — it had come from the heart. After the Hexi faction’s downfall, when Lou Yuxing had returned to his home province, the Emperor had returned the calligraphy to him — a severing of the bond between ruler and minister.
Now, as Lou Yuxing lay on his deathbed, he had insisted on sending the calligraphy back. Perhaps it was a man on the brink of death revisiting his past — recalling, amid all the corruption and filth in which he had become mired, the original convictions he had once held.
The Hexi faction had formed cliques, sought private advantage, and driven out those who stood in their way. Whether this had been Lou Yuxing’s nature from the first, or whether it had been a corruption of the soul that came with the accumulation of power and position — who could say for certain?
After all its wanderings, this piece of calligraphy had arrived at something of a melancholy end — and yet it was perhaps the best ending Lou Yuxing could have hoped for. The Emperor had at least understood that last, faint impulse of awakening conscience that had stirred in him at the hour of his death.
Such, at least, was Pei Shaohuai’s thought.
The Emperor said: “It has been four years since the Hexi faction fell. The court enjoyed a few years of relative calm — and now I notice that certain unclean things seem to have begun to surface once more, stirring the waters of the court.” His expression grew heavy, and he frowned as he went on: “I reviewed the affair of the Treasonous Pamphlet in my mind, and I find myself with a question: if a different man had been Grand Chancellor, would the Hexi faction never have arisen? I am by no means certain.”
The renewed undercurrents in the court were themselves proof enough of this.
“Duckweed floating on a river — when the wind blows, does it not gather into clusters?” The Emperor reflected aloud. “I have thought long on this. This tendency runs unchecked through the court. Disposing of one man or two, or even a group of them — that is no more than raising the temperature beneath a pot that is already boiling. It treats the symptom, not the sickness.”
“What I can see here, beneath my very eyes — imagine how much worse it must be in Jinling in the subsidiary capital, in the yamen offices scattered across the provinces.” The Emperor’s final thought: “I have come to suspect that the fault may lie in how we select and employ officials. Those in high positions wield great power, and those beneath them align themselves accordingly. If we could alter the rules by which talent is recognized and office bestowed, we might perhaps succeed in changing this prevailing temper.”
To speak plainly: if the temper of the court did not change, one Hexi faction would fall, only for another to rise in time — and so it would continue, the Da Qing dynasty forever enmeshed in factional strife.
The Emperor’s gaze rested on Pei Shaohuai. It was plain that this burden was to fall on his shoulders. To accomplish such a thing, strategy, courage, and foresight were each equally indispensable.
Pei Shaohuai understood, in the depths of his own mind, that if one truly pursued the matter to its root, the cause lay in the concentration of power in the sovereign’s hands — from which all the habits of officialdom then flowed as natural consequence.
To speak of this while remaining within the world as it was — that would be nothing more than a castle in the air.
But that a man seated upon the imperial throne could reflect to this degree — that alone was a quality rarely seen across a thousand years of history. That a man who had lived his entire life within the palace walls could nevertheless see through to the situation in Jinling without being blinded by the clever words of his ministers — that spoke to the Emperor’s mastery of statecraft and human management.
Pei Shaohuai even thought to himself: if he and the Emperor had not been aligned in their aims, the Emperor’s skill at managing men was such that even with two lifetimes of experience, Pei Shaohuai might not have been his match. The management of men was a different art entirely from learning and insight.
“I have decided to begin with the Capital Evaluation. Boyuan — are you willing to take this upon yourself?” the Emperor asked.
Pei Shaohuai thought silently: what a question — whether he was willing or not, the appointment had already been handed down. But he was indeed willing to lend what small strength he had to push the world, however slightly, a step forward.
“Your servant is willing to do what little he can to share Your Majesty’s burden,” he replied, and accepted.
The Emperor thought of the appointment as Junior Supervisor of the Heir Apparent and addressed Pei Shaohuai directly: “As for the matter of entering the Office of the Heir Apparent — there is no need to feel any pressure on that account. My original intention was not to have you draw too close to the Eastern Palace too soon, for fear of stirring criticism among the court officials and troubling your mind unnecessarily. But since the Ministry of Personnel raised it, and the occasion presented itself, I felt it could only do the Crown Prince good to spend some time with you — given his disposition.”
To speak in such terms was to treat Pei Shaohuai as a minister of the closest confidence.
To call it an outright entrusting would be somewhat overstating it — the Emperor was not yet at an age one would consider old.
The Emperor’s gaze settled once more on the calligraphy — “When the ruler values integrity, upright men will stand before him” — letting Pei Shaohuai see that the Emperor too had the heart of a caring father, even if he rarely gave it expression.
The matter of the Quanzhou customs silver flowing into the Eastern Palace was known to the Emperor — and his attitude on the question had, in effect, given Pei Shaohuai a certain implicit signal: the Emperor had never had any intention of replacing the heir. Even if the Crown Prince had made errors, the fault, in its essence, did not lie with the Crown Prince himself.
Pei Shaohuai understood. Before the Emperor had ascended to the throne, he had suffered greatly on account of his late father’s disfavor and the contentions over legitimate and illegitimate succession. Now the positions were reversed — putting himself in his son’s place — how could the Emperor bear to subject the Crown Prince to the very sufferings he himself had endured?
So long as the Crown Prince committed no grave error, the Emperor would not move against him.
“Your servant understands,” Pei Shaohuai replied.
The Emperor plucked a fresh piece from the bowl with a look of cheerful readiness. “Chess — let us play.”
He was just about to make his move when Pei Shaohuai was quicker to act, holding up a hand to stop him: “Your Majesty — business is business, and chess is chess. It is my turn.”
He could not be allowed to take liberties with the game.
The Emperor clicked his tongue and shook his head with feeling: “This is the true pleasure of a well-matched opponent — every move contested, not a shred of mercy given. There is no one quite like you, Boyuan.”
Pei Shaohuai found himself genuinely uncertain whether this was meant as a compliment.
When the game at last concluded, Chief Eunuch Xiao, who had returned in the interim, entered the hall and addressed the Emperor: “Your Majesty, just now, a messenger came from Her Majesty the Empress — she has personally prepared several dishes and invites Your Majesty to come and taste them.”
The Emperor, seeing Pei Shaohuai still present, appeared momentarily at a loss.
Pei Shaohuai spoke at once: “Your Majesty, my wife and children are waiting for me at home — it is time I took my leave.” He had no wish to put the Emperor in an awkward position.
“Then let us leave it there for today.” The Emperor said. “Xiao Jin — see Boyuan out for me.”
“This old servant obeys.”
On the way out of the palace, Pei Shaohuai and Chief Eunuch Xiao had grown into something like old acquaintances over the years. They walked and exchanged light conversation about this and that, and before they knew it had arrived at the palace gates.
At the moment of parting, Chief Eunuch Xiao said: “His Majesty summoned the Bureau Director today intending to keep you for the evening meal — and had even instructed the Imperial kitchens to add several extra dishes in preparation. It was only when the message came from the Kunning Palace midway through—”
In all their past dealings, Chief Eunuch Xiao had always been mild and even-tempered, and had never once overstepped by making remarks about his master’s private affairs. That he should say this much today struck Pei Shaohuai as distinctly out of the ordinary.
And the words carried, beneath the surface, a detectable note of displeasure toward the Kunning Palace — which was one of the gravest things an eunuch attendant could allow himself.
Pei Shaohuai’s expression remained unchanged. He did not take up the remark and said only: “I am much obliged to Chief Eunuch Xiao for seeing me out.”
Chief Eunuch Xiao knew he had let his tongue run ahead of him. He smiled and smoothed it over: “This old servant will see you no further, Bureau Director Pei. Please take your time.”
On the carriage ride home, Pei Shaohuai sat in thought.
Perhaps it was the Empress’s sudden appearance that caused Pei Shaohuai’s mind to turn, once again, to the Huai Prince far away in Raozhou Prefecture.
The Crown Prince would not lose the Eastern Palace as long as he committed no grave error. But what if he did?
Pei Shaohuai had intended to stand well back, watching from the riverbank. Without quite noticing how it had happened, he found that he was already standing in the middle of the current.