Who Is the Loyal Minister, Who Is the Hero?
"This weather, I swear..."
The day was sullen and damp, and my mood was at its worst. On a day like this I wanted nothing more than to fry up a plate of savory pancakes, but the house was utterly empty. I had meant to leave a few servants behind; in the end I had given up on that too and sent every last one of them to mind the shops.
"Shall I go out and eat?"
Just in case, I took up a rain hat, stepped outside, and flung the gate open with all my strength.
Creeeak—
And there she was.
What?
"Are you the Deputy Imperial Censor?"
A senior palace woman stood there with a veil over her face, only her two large eyes blinking. On either side of her were two elderly eunuchs in plain clothes. I had been on my way out—why were they planted in front of my gate?
"Well now. And where have you come from?"
"We are under orders to escort the Deputy Imperial Censor."
"Escort me where?"
"To the imperial palace."
"Hold on. My court robes..."
This was no ordinary matter. I rushed back for my official robes, threw them on, and came out again.
"As for the others..."
"We were told to bring only the Deputy Imperial Censor. There is no time. We leave at once."
Ha. Is the Emperor himself summoning me?
I could guess well enough what this was, but it was far too obvious. The Ministry of Works would certainly have eyes on the road. Even so, I had to go. Under their guidance, I set out for the imperial palace.
"What—this place is..."
"Minister of Works, we have brought him."
"Hahaha. Xuande. You've come?"
This was Cao Cao's villa. In the very hour that Zhang Qian, summoned by the Emperor, was hurrying into the palace, Cao Cao had abruptly sent for Liu Bei.
"Xuande, how have you been of late?"
"Nothing out of the ordinary. Why do you ask?"
"Fishing, a vegetable plot—I hear you live in perfect quiet. So, are you enjoying the tug on the line?"
"Hahaha. Only as a way to pass the time."
Liu Bei flinched, but he answered with a smile.
"Looks like a downpour is coming, and thunder besides. A thoroughly miserable day. Days like this always put me in mind of wine."
Cao Cao led him to the villa's pavilion, where a wine table had been laid with considerable care. Liu Bei and Cao Cao drank together beneath it, while maidservants of the Ministry of Works and military officers kept watch all around. He felt as if he had walked into a tiger's den, and yet Liu Bei remained calm.
"Come, Xuande. It's been a long while—let us drink our fill."
"I never refuse a drinking party. I thank you for the invitation, and I'll enjoy it well."
I arrived within the stern imperial palace of Xudu.
"Halt. Who goes there?"
"This is the Deputy Imperial Censor. He comes by imperial command. Stand aside!"
A eunuch of at least the rank of Central Regular Attendant shouted at the palace guards, but they only looked on him with suspicion.
"His Majesty's command? Anyone who passes this point must be reported."
"You—aren't you the Tiger-Brave Guards?"
Something Guan Yu would never have imagined was unfolding before me. They started at the sight of me and answered.
"Our apologies. The inner palace is kept by the Tiger-Brave Guards, but the outer palace is kept by us of the Ministry of Works."
"Ah. I see. I'm going in."
"Forgive us! If we do not record the reason, we will be beheaded! Please..."
So Cao Cao's hand reached even to the outer palace. It was enough to make a man sick. But what could I do? If the business was meant to be secret, I had to play along.
"I am the Deputy Imperial Censor of the Censorate. I am charged with the court's supervisory duties, and I am one of the few officials who may submit memorials and reports directly to His Majesty."
"That is..."
"If you must report it to the Ministry of Works, tell them this. My brother-in-law serves under the Chamberlain for the Palace Revenues, and the Gentleman of that office is auditing the imperial treasury. Censorial oversight is required."
It was a story invented on the spot. The Ministry clerks looked as though they wondered whether it was even true, but they bowed their heads and let me through all the same.
At last I entered the inner palace. Beyond it were the Tiger-Brave Guards who truly protected the imperial house—and Guan Yu.
"Baijin? Is that you?"
"Brother Yunchang."
"What business brings you here? Don't tell me those men outside..."
In that instant the veiled palace woman guiding me raised a finger to her lips toward Guan Yu. She stood before him and, with perfect firmness, signaled him to keep his mouth shut. Guan Yu read the situation at once.
"Ah—no, this is... Ahem!"
"Please come inside. His Majesty is in the innermost chamber."
They were leading me somewhere still more secret, a place chosen to cut off anyone who might listen or watch. I walked a long while through the maze of the palace until I came to the entrance of a room in a dark corner, lit by only a few candles.
"Your Majesty, we have brought the Deputy Imperial Censor."
"Bid him enter at once."
The door opened, and the Emperor was there. I bowed according to ritual and lowered my head before him.
"Deputy Imperial Censor Zhang Qian, raise your head."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
He was still a youthful figure who had only just reached twenty, and yet he had weathered more storms than any emperor. Unease and the weight of a hard life filled him.
"Your Majesty, why have you sought this servant at such an hour?"
"What are you to me?"
"Your subject."
"Truly my subject? More so than your bond with the Left General, and your bond with the Minister of Works?"
"Your Majesty, friendship among subjects is a matter of faction and association. The bond between lord and subject cannot, of course, be set beneath anything else."
"...I cannot even remember how long it has been since I have seen a capable minister such as you."
The Emperor was about to lay something very heavy before me. An imperial command—and, because he meant to trust me, the whole of his heart. And I...
Meanwhile, as Liu Bei and Cao Cao tipped their cups, old stories suddenly surfaced.
"That night, too, it was late, and the rain was coming down steadily. After I failed in my attempt to deal with Dong Zhuo alone, I was in a wretched state. All I could think was that I had to flee, anywhere at all."
Cao Cao tilted his cup and called up the day in his life he least wished to remember.
"Before long I came to the house of Uncle Lü, a man my father had given a minor post back when he was Grand Commandant. He received me, brought hot water and fresh clothes, showed me to a room, and told me to rest well."
"You had a righteous heart, resolved to strike down Dong Zhuo. Of course there were people who thought it right to help you."
In an instant, Cao Cao's eyes changed.
"Heh heh... heheheh. Help? Me? Xuande, did you truly think so?"
"Was it not so?"
Cao Cao told him the dreadful truth of that day.
"In front of the guest quarters of the man who told me to rest easy, the servants were sharpening knives, and ropes had been piled up in heaps. Uncle Lü said he was going out to buy a few jars of wine, and yet he rode off on nothing but one old, wretched mule. So I took up my sword and went out at once."
"Surely not... that whole household!"
"They said they were going to slaughter a pig. But why did I never see a pig that day? It was more than ten years ago, so perhaps my memory fails me. There were even wretches in the streets who saw it and wagged their tongues, saying I repaid kindness with enmity! I killed them all."
"And the head of the Lü household... did he actually bring the wine back?"
"Ah, he did. A single jar, barely enough to wet one man's throat. So what do you suppose I felt? If I had been taken that day, I would have thought Heaven had abandoned me. And so I dealt with it, telling myself that such a thing could never be allowed to happen to me, Cao Cao!"
No matter how Liu Bei turned it over, the affair still seemed deeply unsettled. The tale of Lü Boshe was one the powerful clans of Yanzhou had used openly to gnaw at Cao Cao, muttering that he was a wretch who would kill even the benefactor who saved his life. But Cao Cao had stamped into his own memory, past all doubt, the conviction that Lü Boshe's household had meant to sell him.
"Xuande, do you too think me unjust, unworthy, a beast that does not know gratitude? Do you think I shed blood over some petty misunderstanding?"
"How could one judge the affairs of the world after hearing only a single story?"
At that, Cao Cao's face twisted further and further. Perhaps it was that he had, in his cups, exposed a shame he might otherwise have kept hidden—and the man who heard it was far too calm. Liu Bei set down his cup and spoke quietly.
"Now that I think of it, I too remember a great thing I did on a day when the rain was falling like this."
"...?"
Cao Cao's face was still rigid. This time it was Liu Bei who brought out an old matter.
"At the time, my merit in suppressing the Yellow Turbans had been recognized, and I was magistrate of Anxi County in the kingdom of Zhongshan. By coincidence, that is Baijin's marquisate now, and it was also the place that enjoyed the patronage of Elder Zhang Shiping, the greatest merchant of those days."
Liu Bei's face was grave as he emptied out the story he had kept buried, right there before Cao Cao.
"Anxi County had been laid waste by several wars. There was nothing to eat. People pounded tree roots and mud into water to boil a gruel, and even that was not enough—they were about to trade their own children and eat them. I could not simply stand by and watch."
"...And so?"
"I knew it was a thing that must not be done, but I had no choice. I went to Elder Zhang Shiping. A man who ate an official's salary borrowed money at usury, altered the ledgers, bought grain and seed rice, and handed them out. In place of interest, I freed the nighttime passage of merchant caravans. I did it to keep people from sitting down in the streets and starving to death."
"Ho ho ho. So Brother Xuande, too, committed a corruption that was not quite corruption, all for the sake of his own heart?"
Liu Bei drank, and went on.
"A supervising inspector under the provincial administration came. I explained the circumstances again and again. But that man, no matter what justification I offered, said corruption was corruption, and a crime was a crime. He declared he would petition for my dismissal and demanded I hand over the seal. My brothers flew into a rage, seized that inspector, and strung him up... They lost their reason... They took up an iron rod..."
"...Did you kill him? An inspector of the realm?"
"The rain poured until his wounds swelled and split, and he could barely draw breath, beaten half to death. I threw the seal he wanted down before him and never set foot in those parts again."
"Beating a supervisory official to death—if you hadn't been pardoned amid the wars, Xuande, it would have been a disaster."
"Heaven will know. Even the crime I committed will be held in that knowledge."
Cao Cao, who feared betrayal even from the will of Heaven, and said the world could not betray him. Liu Bei, who answered with perfect firmness that even a righteous deed, if it broke law and principle, should be left for the world to judge.
"Xuande—no. Left General, Marquis of Zhongshan! You are truly a man."
"You praise me too highly. How could a worthless fellow like me..."
The rain grew ever fiercer, and the drinking between Cao Cao and Liu Bei stretched on.
"Your Majesty, I am ashamed to speak, but to strike Cao Cao in Xudu would bring about a catastrophe that cannot be undone."
"You say it cannot be done? Even if I issue an imperial command?"
Both his eyes were full of hesitation and regret.
"Even if we scrape together every soldier of Imperial Uncle Liu's Xuzhou and Yuzhou, the gap with Minister of Works Cao Cao is far too wide. Not unless warlords such as Yuan Shao and Liu Biao join us, and we make it two against one."
"Deputy Imperial Censor, they..."
"Yes. Yuan Shao once refused to recognize Your Majesty and sought to enthrone Grand Marshal Liu Yu—the crime of a rebel—and he has been earnestly begging pardon of the court at Xudu so that he need not come down from north of the Yellow River. Liu Biao bears the surname Liu of the same imperial house, and yet, unlike the Left General, he will absolutely not come to court."
In a word, unless those two joined the cause, for Liu Bei's faction to seize Cao Cao would be suicide.
"To take Cao Cao, we need time, and a force that will move as Your Majesty's own hands and feet. Elite soldiers of the sort spoken of in the chapter on enriching the state in Master Wu's art of war."
I could see the disappointment in the Emperor's eyes. This was not the answer he had been thinking of. But in the present situation it was no different from binding oneself in straw and leaping into the fire. For now, he had to endure.
"Your Majesty, first remove the enemies outside, one after another, and heap still more military merit upon the men within whom Your Majesty has in mind. Then, with a sure justification, proceed step by step."
"Do you... think I still have such time left?"
What?
"The moment I was born, my mother was poisoned to death. At eight I lost the Grand Empress Dowager, my grandmother, who tried to shield me from the hands of the empress dowager who killed my mother. At nine I lost my imperial father. At ten I lost my half-brother, the Prince of Hongnong, a bond of love and hate. Dong Zhuo, who said he would enthrone me and aid me and then ruled as regent, died when I was twelve. After that, under Li Jue and Guo Si, an emperor was treated as less than the dogs those men kept. For five years!"
This is a mistake. I have touched his trauma, and the reverse scale that has been trembling all this time.
Born, and at once his mother murdered by poison in a palace intrigue. The grandmother who might have protected him dead as well, amid whispers that the empress dowager who killed his own mother had a hand in some unexplained end. Forced to live beneath that murderous empress through his half-brother and the chaos of the Ten Attendants, and then, once he became emperor, protected only by compulsion. No sooner had that half-brother emperor barely been saved than a man named Dong Zhuo deposed the elder brother, declared this one emperor, kept him like a beloved doll, burned the capital, and went to Chang'an. Dong Zhuo died in Chang'an, and the four swine who slaughtered every loyal minister set him beneath their feet and treated him not as an emperor but as a beggar. Then he met Cao Cao. And Cao Cao seized the whole of the government.
If I tell him now to grit his teeth and wait... No. This—
Before politics, before law, as one human being to another, no one could stop the explosion of this emperor's pent-up grief and trauma.
"Your Majesty, forgive my rudeness! This disloyal subject has spoken out of turn."
"You, too, are saying you cannot resolve this."
"Your Majesty, I am abashed to speak, but there is exactly one move."
"And that is... what?"
"Your Majesty, the breath of war will surely circle once more beyond the capital. For the sake of that campaign, bestow upon the Left General the tally and the ceremonial axe, and with them an imperial sword."
"Why would I send away the Imperial Uncle, who would aid me and not Cao Cao?"
"If you send Cao Cao outside, will he not divide his army, settle the matter, and then, brandishing that military merit, seize still more of the court's offices? And it must be the Left General who goes."
"!"
"Until the Left General has settled the battlefield that will arise outside and returned, no blood will be shed in the capital. If tens of thousands of troops so much as hear of an upheaval at court, whom do you think the Left General will suspect—and toward whom will he come running?"
This plan is not the whole of it, but in a crisis it is the best move we have. Yuan Shu, Yuan Shao, Liu Biao—whichever one he strikes and returns from, the merit piled up in the meantime has to force a true reckoning between Cao Cao and Liu Bei. Another year or two, at the least. Until Guandu, Cao Cao will be checked from within and without, unable to move as he pleases...
"I shall... consider your proposal as well."
What?
Ha. Even my proposal is only to be considered. So there are several plans. Is what I offered Plan B, or Plan C?
In the end, even if it did not come through me, the will to strike Cao Cao was trauma, and a rage he had long kept buried. There was truly nothing I could say. Knowing it, and still unable to help pitying him, I watched the Emperor open his mouth.
"Even in the worst of circumstances, will you be able to aid me?"
The Son of Heaven's desperate question, asked in earnest.
"So far as Your Majesty trusts us, we will give all the loyalty of horse and hound."
And at my answer, the Emperor smiled. Only slightly—but he smiled.
At that same hour, listening to the rain late into the night, Cao Cao spoke to Liu Bei.
"These days, wouldn't you say everyone has grown sensitive, what with unpleasant matters and unpleasant rumors? How long has it been since we spoke this openly?"
"I like a gathering such as this as well."
"That is why I acknowledge you. How many men are there like you?"
"Heh. Why do you lift this man so high? My character and my talent do not reach so far."
Even as the rain kept growing rougher, Liu Bei matched Cao Cao as best he could and carried the drinking on. The fierce liquor Cao Cao said had been brewed in his homeland. The Ministry of Works troops who had been rotating in shifts since the start. The food and wine that kept coming, and the atmosphere that shifted ever so subtly. Liu Bei endured all of it alone, holding his own against Cao Cao's power.
Inside Cao Cao's villa, the gathering at which the heroes of the world were being weighed went on.