Friends of the Yuans (2)
Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu both stopped their quarrel at Cao Cao's words.
The fight had gone well past vicious—into the kind of talk where even the most unfilial slander was tossed around as if it cost nothing—but this was not their first brawl, and it would not be their last, so the truce came quickly.
"What is it? What did you see at the palace?"
When Yuan Shu asked, Cao Cao spoke as if whispering.
"He Jin."
"He... what?"
"The new Empress's elder brother."
"Ah."
Yuan Shu made that short sound, and Yuan Shao's brow furrowed slightly.
"Let's go inside first. We can talk properly there."
And so Cao Cao, Yuan Shao, Yuan Shu, and Zhang Hong went indoors.
Even after everyone had taken a seat, Cao Cao still did not begin.
"You acted like you had something huge to say. Why the silence?"
"We're still waiting on a few more."
Before Yuan Shu could even ask who, two men arrived as if on cue.
"So the most debauched degenerates in all of Luoyang have gathered in one place."
"Isn't that Mengzhuo—Zhang Miao—and his little brother?"
Both Cao Cao and Yuan Shu looked genuinely pleased. Yuan Shao, too, allowed a faint smile.
"Well, well, Brother Benchu. Ever since that six-year mourning of yours, a man can hardly get a look at your face."
Yuan Shao returned Zhang Miao's joke in kind.
"I never imagined so many people would believe that wearing down my doorstep with their own feet would make them filial sons. I was the one who actually observed the mourning, you know."
Cao Cao, Zhang Hong, Zhang Miao, and his younger brother Zhang Chao all burst out laughing. Yuan Shu snorted a chuckle as well.
Cao Cao introduced the Zhang brothers to Zhang Hong and let them exchange greetings, then at last began.
"Shall we talk about the butcher who's made his appearance in Luoyang—He Jin?"
"Butchering must pay pretty well, huh? How much did he stuff down the Regular Palace Attendants' throats to shove his little sister in as an Honored Lady and then make her Empress?"
Yuan Shu sneered. Cao Cao shook his head.
"The gossip around town has it that He Jin paid bribes. I see it differently."
Yuan Shao asked in a low voice.
"And what does Mengde think?"
"If bribes were all it took, two things don't add up. First: a bribe can get you as far as the inner palace. Becoming Empress is an entirely different matter. Even if my grandfather came back from the dead, he couldn't have arranged that."
Zhang Miao grinned.
"Meaning a nobody like Zhang Rang, who couldn't touch your grandfather's toenail, certainly couldn't have done it either."
"Exactly. The second strange point: Zhang Rang took He Jin's other sister as his own daughter-in-law."
The amusement drained from Yuan Shu's face.
"Wait—that would make Zhang Rang's adopted son and the Emperor brothers-in-law."
"Would a man arrange a marriage alliance with a family he'd only shoved into the inner palace after taking their bribes? I don't think so."
Yuan Shao asked again.
"Gentleman Consultant Cao Mengde. Of all of us, you can get closest to the Emperor's side. ...Don't tell me you think this was the Emperor's will?"
"Correct."
Zhang Miao rapped his fingers hard against his own temple.
"Unless the Emperor's gone soft in the head, why would he make Empress a girl from a butcher's family? Is the new Empress that beautiful?"
"Oh, she's a beauty, all right. But the Emperor must have had a reason to take as his wife a girl from a family that slaughtered livestock—a family that's neither Qingliu nor Zhuoliu."
"And what reason would that be?"
Yuan Shu answered Zhang Miao's question for him, wrinkling his nose as if he'd caught a stench.
"He didn't want another Dou Wu. Or a Deng Cong. Or a Song Feng. That's what this is."
The men Yuan Shu named had been imperial in-laws, or had tried to become them. And for that, they had died.
"So the Emperor figured He Jin is too lowborn to ever become that kind of consort-clan power?"
Cao Cao nodded.
"On top of that, He Jin and the new Empress already owe the eunuchs a debt. If it wasn't that they paid bribes—if Zhang Rang came to them first and picked her as the new Empress..."
"Mmm," Yuan Shao added.
"The eunuchs wouldn't have cooked this up on their own, so the Emperor is behind it?"
"The Emperor needed an imperial in-law from a humble house—one already in debt to the eunuchs. That's how I see it."
"...That would solve one chronic problem. The fighting between the eunuchs and the consort clans."
"To be precise: the fighting between an Emperor who keeps the eunuchs as his personal guard, and uncontrollable imperial in-laws who want to swap the Emperor out whenever they please. That's how His Majesty would see it."
"Don't take an Empress from some high-nosed great clan. Build, from the start, an imperial in-law who already listens to the Emperor..."
"Set it up this way, and even if the Emperor changes, the 'maternal uncle' will never get to throw his weight around. That uncle will already be in the eunuchs' grip."
"An imperial in-law managed by the eunuchs closest to the throne."
The Emperor's scheme was ingenious. No man of the Qingliu would extend a hand to He Jin, stained as he was by the eunuchs' filthy touch—which meant He Jin could never use the Pure Stream as a base from which to oppose them. And even if the eunuchs were not the issue, no scholar-official would bow his head to a man from a family so far beneath him. Inside that double fence, He Jin would become exactly the instrument Emperor Ling had designed him to be.
Before these thoughts had even finished flickering through the minds of Yuan Shao and the others, Cao Cao clapped his hands.
"Now then—the strange parts don't end there."
"What else."
Yuan Shu asked bluntly. Cao Cao grinned.
"The new Empress has a son she bore while she was still an Honored Lady. Right now, he's the Emperor's only son."
"What about the boy?"
"The Emperor's been at this woman and that since before he was even twenty, so he's got plenty of children. Strangely enough, the princesses grow up just fine—it's only the imperial princes who keep dying off."
"What's strange about that? The palace women were just playing their little games with each other."
"Which is why the Emperor raised this only prince... outside the palace."
As if he were about to perform some trick from a Western Regions entertainer, Cao Cao spread his palms toward his friends.
"This prince is called Shi Hou. He's being raised in the house of a Daoist named Shi Zimiao. The Empress stayed there with Shi Hou as well, back when she was still an Honored Lady."
Zhang Miao prodded him not to drag it out.
"What does that have to do with what you were saying before?"
"Shi Zimiao's house was under rather heavy guard."
"He's the Emperor's only son. Isn't that obvious?"
"He Jin was among those guards."
"It's his sister and his nephew."
"But here's the thing... two kinds of people who really don't belong together have been coming and going from that house."
"Don't belong together?"
"The first are eunuchs like Zhang Rang and Zhao Zhong."
"Zhang Rang and the Empress are in-laws, so that tracks."
"The second are Daoist adepts—and nobody can say where they came from."
This time Yuan Shao's eyes flashed sharp.
"...Have those two groups ever entered Shi Zimiao's house at the same time?"
"Often. Very often."
Zhang Miao asked, sounding startled.
"How did you even find that out, Mengde?"
"There are still plenty of eunuchs who remember my grandfather. And I picked up a few things while I was Colonel of the Northern District. It's hard to do anything in Luoyang without me hearing about it."
Unlike Cao Cao, who mixed a little playful boasting into his words, Yuan Shao folded his arms and sank into thought.
"...Mengde. You just said 'Daoist adepts nobody can say where they came from.'"
Cao Cao laughed. "Oho."
"You caught that, Brother Benchu."
"A man like you would already have found out where those Daoists came from. You wouldn't have called us here otherwise."
"That's right. Most of them came from Jizhou."
Yuan Shu echoed it.
"Jizhou?"
Yuan Shao answered his question.
"When I was out serving as County Magistrate of Puyang in Dong Commandery... that was more than six years ago now, but I heard the rumors out of Jizhou often enough."
Puyang County in Dong Commandery belonged to Yanzhou, but cross the Yellow River and you were in Wei Commandery of Jizhou.
"There's a certain Daoist sect in Jizhou that's winning the common people's support to a degree that isn't natural. Their power grows by the day."
"Why are we suddenly talking about Daoists?"
"When I came out of mourning for my parents, that sect's power had swollen far beyond anything I'd imagined. From Yuzhou to Qingzhou, from Jizhou to Youzhou—if someone is a commoner, you may as well assume they follow that sect."
"And what sect is that, exactly?"
"The Taiping Dao."
Yuan Shao spoke the name, then studied Cao Cao's face as if to confirm it. Instead of nodding, Cao Cao answered like this:
"Shi Hou is eight this year. Young, yes—but old enough that he ought to be receiving a teacher's instruction. And in all this time, not a single Qingliu Confucian scholar has set foot in Shi Zimiao's house."
"The Emperor isn't even educating his own son?"
"When Lady He became Empress and entered the palace this time, Shi Hou went in with her. Who do you suppose followed Shi Hou in as well?"
Yuan Shu's face twisted as if he'd just eaten something truly foul.
"Don't tell me that Daoist bastard went in with him."
"That's right."
Everyone except Cao Cao arrived at the same conclusion.
"He's not teaching the boy Confucianism at all? He's just handing him over to a Daoist?"
"So there was some kind of... deal between the Emperor and this Taiping Dao crowd?"
What that deal might be, none of them could even imagine. Cao Cao was no exception.
"So then—what should we do about it?"
He said it like a man setting an examination question. Everyone cocked their heads.
"I spent a very long time talking about He Jin before I ever brought up the prince, didn't I?"
Once the hint was given, the first to answer was Yuan Shao.
"The loose link in a chain of connections. He Jin."
Yuan Shao asked his "younger cousin," a faint trace of mockery in his voice.
"Gonglu. Can you bow your head to a butcher?"
"What? What kind of bullshit is that? I don't mind taking wandering blades as friends, but I won't stand for those people standing over me."
"Is that so? I can."
"You're going to bow your head to a butcher?"
Yuan Shao ignored the question and asked Cao Cao instead.
"Mengde. What office did He Jin receive when he entered the palace this time?"
"Governor of Henan."
"I see. Then I shall aim for Colonel of Sili. Gonglu—if you can bring yourself to bow your head to He Jin, set your sights on something like Commander of the Rapid Tigers."
It was the tone of a young master of the great Yuan clan—the tone of a man who could simply take an office if he decided he wanted one.
"Why the hell would I do that?"
"No matter how lowborn a man is, once he gets a taste of power, he wants more. That's the way of it."
There was a look in Yuan Shao's eyes that Yuan Shu had never seen before, and for the first time... he felt afraid.
"He Jin will be no different. When his nephew becomes Emperor, will he settle for playing the well-behaved imperial in-law who does as the eunuchs say? Or will he want to enjoy real power as a consort-clan, like Dou Wu—or like the Liang family even further back?"
Only then did Yuan Shu's eyes start moving, sinking into thought.
Zhang Miao waved a hand. "Come on."
"He'd need people backing him to pull that off."
The corner of Yuan Shao's mouth curled higher than before.
"He's lowborn. He's in the eunuchs' grip... and so not a single man of the Qingliu will reach out to him. What if this 'filial son' Yuan Shao were the one who did?"
Yuan Shao rose from his seat.