The Battle for Nan Commandery
The battle for Nan Commandery ended in a complete victory for the allied forces of Liu and Sun. Coming on the heels of the miraculous triumph at Red Cliffs, that unbroken run of victories taught Liu Bei and Sun Quan that Cao Cao was no longer an invincible enemy against whom resistance was futile.
And, in the same breath, that they needed one another.
Zhou Yu, who had watched Zhang Fei's exploits with his own eyes, ceded the southern reaches of Nan Commandery to Liu Bei in a bid to strengthen the alliance. Liu Bei, who had taken the four commanderies of southern Jing while the fighting for Nan Commandery was still raging, was of the same mind, and sought to bind their houses by marrying Sun Quan's younger sister.
Both sides were frantically busy settling the aftermath. I, by contrast, had been half confined on the excuse of my wounds, forbidden even to train.
"I'm perfectly fine. Really."
If anything, sitting still only left my body heavier and more sluggish. But I had bled, and perhaps that was why Zhang Fei had sworn that if I disobeyed him this time, he would stop teaching me the martial arts altogether. I could not afford to lose a master like Zhang Fei, and so I had no choice but to keep my distance. There was one thing more.
So Zhang Fei could wear a face like that.
The look of him as he stared at my wound and said, with a bitter mouth, that it would scar. In an age when children were treated as tools and life itself was held cheap, a father, it seemed, was still a father.
Whatever else this body was, its power to heal pressed against the very limits of a human frame. The spear had only grazed me, and already the cut was nearly closed. A scar I could not avoid, but it hindered my movement not in the least.
"Ah... I want to go out."
Zhang Fei was so taken up with the postwar settlement that he passed by without even stepping inside. Perhaps I ought to read. In my previous life I had studied the classical characters and passed the third-grade examination, and with Zhang Lan's memories laid over my own I could now read them as easily as a mother tongue. She had been bright besides; several of the classics were already committed to memory.
"Then why not go out?"
An answer came back to what should have been a mutter spoken to no one.
I turned toward the entrance. A solidly built man who looked to be in his early thirties stood there, a quiet smile on his lips.
"Who are you?"
"Mm. For the present I shall address you not as a retainer of Liu of Yuzhou, but as the daughter of General Zhang Fei, Conqueror of the Caitiffs. I am Lü Meng. I serve the Lieutenant-General."
"Ziming?"
"Oh — so you know of me. Yes. Ziming is my courtesy name."
What the hell.
Why had Lü Meng come? Had he marched under Zhou Yu in this campaign for Nan Commandery? I thought he had, but the memory was fog. Zhou Yu was still alive, so the story in which the world would be forced to look at Lü Meng with new eyes had not yet come to pass — and yet this was not the ignorant Ah Meng of Wu from the proverb, either.
When I watched him with open wariness, Lü Meng — however he took it — spread his palms and spoke.
"Haha. No need to be so on your guard. I came with General Zhang's express permission. And forgive me for walking in so suddenly."
If Zhang Fei had allowed it, taking the man to task would have been strange. I rose and offered a formal salute.
"I was rude as well."
"Then let us consider our faults settled."
Lü Meng joined his hands and bowed his head in turn. So this was no longer the foolish Ah Meng of Wu. Recognizing him as a Lü Meng who had already passed through the growth that would make men look at him anew, I took care to show no hostility.
"May I ask what brings you?"
"Ah. I was slow to come to it. Someone is looking for you."
"Looking for me? The Lieutenant-General, then."
He was using honorifics, and the only men who could send Lü Meng running errands were Zhou Yu and, failing him, Sun Quan. The chance that Sun Quan had come all this way to see me was vanishingly small. It had to be Zhou Yu.
Lü Meng nodded.
"Just so. I was ordered to bring you as a guest. I hope you will come."
"If my father permitted it, how could I refuse? Please, lead the way."
I followed him out, and the cold winter air poured into my lungs. The particular smell of winter filled my nose.
The very end of the year 209. Cao Cao's fierce advance had stalled, and Zhuge Liang's design to divide the realm in three was at last taking shape. Why, in a season like this, had Zhou Yu sent for me?
"Sit."
Lü Meng withdrew. Alone with me in the room, Zhou Yu offered a seat. I sat where he indicated, and from a corner of the tent came the soft clink of something being prepared.
"Is there anything I can do to help?"
I had risen to ask. Zhou Yu laughed lightly.
"It is a pastime of mine. Wait at your ease."
They said Zhou Yu was master not only of strategy and the martial arts, but of poetry, history, rites, and music. There seemed to be one art more worth adding. Tea.
The word I knew for a tea ceremony was a Japanese one; in China, if I remembered right, they simply spoke of the art of tea. And if the etiquette of drinking it already fell under the rites in that old quartet of accomplishments, perhaps it did not need to be listed apart at all.
The skill with which he prepared the tea himself made plain that this was no first attempt, nor a second. It was not fixed to the last gesture, as a modern tea ceremony would be, but if this age had a discipline for brewing tea, it would be exactly what Zhou Yu was doing.
It differed from what I knew, and yet the fragrance stirred a peculiar modern nostalgia. I let myself enjoy the scent as it spread, deep and quiet. Memories welled up, soft and blurred — a stretch of time when insomnia had driven me to live on tea. The wire of my tension, drawn tight, went slack, steeped in that fragrance.
I was sitting before Zhou Yu, and still I closed my eyes in comfort. The muscles of my face, rigid with the simple fact of being before him, eased, and a faint smile formed.
Then a soft clack — Zhou Yu setting down a cup — and I opened my eyes.
"Forgive me. The fragrance was so fine I forgot myself. You brew tea remarkably well."
"Huhu. You flatter me."
He said it, and still a fair measure of pride showed on his face.
I lifted the cup as he had and breathed in, and a deep fragrance rushed up. Nothing like the chamomile I used to drink against insomnia; the strength of it was entirely different. Somewhere I thought I had read that in ancient times tea was taken as medicine more than as a pleasure. As medicine, it was not bad.
A breath of the scent, then a sip. I held it lightly in my mouth and tasted. Mm — bitter, no question. Fortunately I liked bitter things. Had I still had a child's palate, the sort that will eat nothing unless it is sweet, I might have made a face.
"You drink it well. Do you take tea ordinarily? You seem quite used to it."
"Yes? Ah — I have some experience of it."
"Do you? It is a flavor children rarely enjoy."
His manner was gentle, as if it pleased him to watch me savor what he had brewed.
"And the wound?"
"It has healed. I must take after my father."
"Haha. Yes. General Zhang was born a warrior."
After that he spoke of small, ordinary things. What it was like for a girl to live in a military camp led on, before long, to the battle of Nan Commandery itself.
I was just beginning to think the talk might end this harmlessly.
"I have a son the same age as you."
He brought it out with no preamble at all.
"His name is Zhou Xun. Unlike you, he is a frail child. But like you, he was born remarkably fine to look at."
With Zhou Yu for a father, an ill-favored child would have been an astronomical improbability. He was one of the few great beauties set down in the histories, so far beyond the rest that men had fondly called him the beautiful Young Zhou. Meeting him in the flesh, I could see that the measure of beauty had not changed so very much between his age and mine. Born in the modern world, Zhou Yu was handsome enough to have lived on his face alone. His son, Zhou Xun, would be a sickly pretty boy and nothing else.
"If you are willing, how would it be to meet my son?"
"Pardon?"
A father asking a woman, in any age, whether she might care to meet his son meant only one thing. He was weighing her as a daughter-in-law.
I pretended not to understand, and let a quiet refusal show through.
"My eldest brother was born frail as well, and I have heard it is unwise to shift one's residence without great care. I would fear doing the young master harm."
"Then you need only come with me."
The tone was exceedingly soft. So sweet that if I had been a girl in truth, with no memory of a previous life, I might have gone under without a struggle. He was said to be deeply learned in music, and he understood perfectly how his own voice ought to be used. Set a beautiful voice atop looks that could fairly be called the finest under heaven, and there was no more fatally charming man alive.
Unfortunately, my mind ran closer to a man's.
"Forgive me. I am still young, and I cannot leave my parents' side. I ask your understanding."
"And if you were given leave?"
He was persistent. As I remembered it, Zhou Yu's son married a daughter of Sun Quan. I remembered because that wife was Sun Luban, one of the most notorious villainesses in all the Three Kingdoms. Just as Liu Bei and Zhang Fei had become kin by marriage, Zhou Yu and Sun Quan had bound themselves tighter by becoming in-laws.
And he meant to fit me into that? The motive lay far too bare.
"Even if I were to follow Your Lordship's will, my father would never leave my uncle's side."
As direct as words could be. At the meaning beneath them — that even if I married his son, Zhang Fei would remain Liu Bei's loyal man, and neither Zhou Yu's nor Sun Quan's — Zhou Yu's eyes went wide, and then he burst out laughing.
"Ahahahaha! So that is how you saw it? You thought I said all this to lure General Zhang? Hmm. I would be lying if I told you there was none of that in it. But it is not only that."
"What?"
His answer had missed my expectations entirely, and a dazed sound escaped me.
Zhou Yu looked at me gently, as if I were something charming.
"I will speak honestly. I want you. I want you for my daughter-in-law. My lord proposed a match between Xun and his own daughter, and I had meant to accept. But I saw you, and I changed my mind."
He did not seem to be handling me as bait for drawing Zhang Fei over. Was it true? Had Zhou Yu been any good at acting? I didn't think he particularly had.
While I drove my thoughts in circles, trying to judge whether he meant what he said, Zhou Yu put a question to me at his leisure.
"You refused a marriage with General Liu's son, did you not?"
He could learn even that? However good his intelligence, knowing a thing like this was strange.
"Ah...!"
"So it was true."
"You were sounding me out."
"Forgive me. But this, too, is a lesson. Hereafter, be wary of moments like this. Even facing a man you believe to be an ally, think once more, and be careful of what your reactions betray."
That I was bound to Liu Shan by a betrothal pledged in the womb was something Zhou Yu might well have known. He had pursued the alliance of Liu and Sun by arranging the marriage of Sun Quan's younger sister to Liu Bei; he would hardly have failed to consider the son. But he had not known that the betrothal was broken. He had drawn the answer out of my face.
"I can see, vaguely, why you chose as you did. Marry my son, and no such thing will happen. Xun is a clever child, certainly, but his body is too weak for a battlefield. The roles of within and without would change places. You would lead your troops to war, and Xun would tend the house and our lord from inside it. Follow Liu of Yuzhou, and you will be tried without end — tried over whether you are fit to be a general, or fit only to be wife to the son who will succeed him."
His words did not sound far from the truth. However much merit I won, the tag of woman would follow at my back, most likely until I had aged past the point where even a late marriage grew difficult. And that would be about the time the Three Kingdoms had all been set firmly in place — which meant that through the very years I most needed to act, I would carry the risk that the reins might be pulled on me at any moment.
When I found no rebuttal, Zhou Yu went on, plainly set on persuading me to the last.
A promise to hold the alliance so long as Liu Bei did not betray them first — and the word of Zhou Yu himself. If it was his will, Sun Quan would follow.
I will admit it tempted me. If only Zhou Yu were not fated to die before his time. If I accepted, and if I took meticulous care that illness never claimed him, it might even be possible to keep the man alive.
But I could not nod.
"I am grateful for a kindness greater than I deserve."
"Then..."
"But please forgive me. I cannot answer it."
Zhou Yu's eyes trembled, just barely. Had he not expected a refusal? Or did he truly like me so well that it grieved him not to take me into his family?
Under the look that asked me why, I thought to myself.
But the lord I would be serving is Sun Quan.
A man who had begun with the makings of an enlightened ruler and then slid, year by year, into ruin — a drunkard. Serve the most dreadful master alive, saving only Cao Pi? And set aside Liu Bei, an ideal lord if one excepted Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, and Liu Shan, who folded at a word from his ministers? Why would I?
I could hardly say any of that to Zhou Yu, so I chose a suitable answer.
"A gentleman does not speak with two tongues. I may be a woman, but I mean to follow the Great Way, and I cannot abandon Liu of Yuzhou, to whom I have already sworn my loyalty."
"I see. A regrettable thing."
Zhou Yu closed his eyes and murmured it low. The regret sat so convincingly on his face that I felt, absurdly, as if the fault were mine.
I needed to leave, and soon. At Zhang Fei's side, he would not be able to press me any further.
"The hour is late, Lord Zhou. I shall withdraw."
"Yes. If your mind ever changes, come to me. I will be waiting. Always."
Mm. I understood that he had a wife, and children besides, and that he was looking at me as a prospective daughter-in-law. Even so, words like those felt strange.
Even then I made a courteous farewell, and left his quarters without hurry.
I drew the cold evening air of winter deep into my lungs and felt easier at once. When I had put a little distance between myself and his quarters, I stopped and looked back.
He had not yet gone to sleep. Light still leaked from within.
"It seems this life was not our fate."
Even so, Zhou Yu — I did like you.
If we part here, I doubt we will ever meet again.
So I hope we part with nothing but good memories.
"It was an honor."
I offered a greeting he would never hear, and set in order the heart I had carried out of my previous life.
Because now, I am Zhang Lan.