“Damn it, get out of the way and let a man work,” the executioner snarled.
He began to bang furiously on strips of steel mesh, and the soldiers panted and groaned as they carried us into an adjoining dungeon and dumped us upon the floor. They staggered out, clutching their hernias, and slammed the door, and we stared at the fellow who was to be drawn and quartered. He was attached to the wall with a leg chain, and he was eating a bowl of rice.
“What are you doing here?” Master Li asked.
“At the moment I am eating my last supper,” said Henpecked Ho. “Good evening, Li Kao. Good evening, Number Ten Ox. It is a great pleasure to see you again, although one rather regrets the circumstances. May I offer you some rice? They have even given me a small jar of wine. Quite decent of them, don't you think?”
“Wine, by all means,” said Li Kao.
Henpecked Ho's leg chain was just long enough for him to reach us and pour wine down our throats. They really were treating him with consideration because it was very expensive wine: Wu-fan, which is jet-black and so sweet that it tastes like molasses flavored with engraving acid.
“Have you really been sentenced to be drawn and quartered?” I asked.
“It's a very distressing story.” He sighed. “Do you remember that I had spent sixteen years trying to decipher fragments of clay tablets?”
“A very ancient ginseng fairy tale,” said Master Li.
“Precisely, and do you remember that those grave robbers dug up a very large clay tablet? Well, it turned out to be the key to the whole thing. I could scarcely believe how quickly the pieces fell into place, and the story that emerged was so interesting that I could scarcely wait to see what came next. Then one day I entered my workshop and discovered that every clay fragment was gone, and I ran around weeping and tearing my hair until my dear wife told me to stop making a fool of myself. The Ancestress had remarked that fiddling with clay tablets was a frivolous hobby for a grown man, so my dear wife had ordered the servants to dump the tablets into the river, where, of course, they dissolved into mud.”
“I would have slit her miserable throat,” Master Li growled.
“Indeed you would have, and I thought about you a great deal,” said Henpecked Ho. “You had advised me to use an axe, so I stole an axe and went after my dear wife.”
“Did you get her?” I asked.
“I chopped her to pieces, and then I chopped her seven fat sisters to pieces. It was delightful,” said Henpecked Ho. “Then I came here to try to chop the Ancestress to pieces, but her soldiers caught me first. Oh well, I suppose that one can't have everything.”
“Ho, you did splendidly!” Master Li said.
“Do you really think so? Some people might consider my behaviour rather gross,” Henpecked Ho said dubiously. “I was maddened beyond endurance because now I will never know how the story came out, and it concerned two delightful deities that I had never heard of, even though I am familiar with the entire Heavenly Pantheon.”
Li Kao thoughtfully chewed a wisp of his scraggly beard, which was about all the movement that he could manage.
“Ho, as a matter of rather academic curiosity, have you ever encountered a deity called the Peddler? He wears a robe covered with Heavenly or supernatural symbols, he leans upon a crutch, and he carries a flute and a ball and a bell.”
“The Peddler is not one of the six hundred named gods, but our knowledge of the Pantheon is incomplete,” Ho said thoughtfully. “It must be remembered that the first Duke of Ch'in destroyed the temples and priests and worshippers of any cult that annoyed him, and knowledge of many minor deities disappeared from the face of the earth. The Peddler might have been among them, and I am morally certain that the two delightful deities in the story on the tablet also suffered the duke's displeasure. After all, peasants treasure ginseng fairy tales, and they would never willingly abandon a story about the handsomest god in Heaven and the most beautiful girl in the world and a crown and three feathers and—”
“What!” Master Li yelped.
“Er… and a crown and three feathers.”
“And three faithless handmaidens?”
“Well, I don't know about faithless, but three handmaidens were indeed briefly mentioned. Their names were—”
“Ho, let's hear it in sequence,” said Master Li. “Your unmatched memory has surely retained every word, and I cannot imagine a better way to pass the time before being tortured to death than to listen to a fairy tale.”
“Would you really like to hear it?” Henpecked Ho said eagerly. “I had so hoped to be able to share it with somebody, and perhaps my years of labor won't have been wasted after all. Even in half-completed form it's a very good story.”
One of my clearest memories of the whole baffling affair is that of lying upon a dungeon floor, wrapped in chains from my neck to my toes, listening to the gentle voice of Henpecked Ho while the executioner banged upon our Shirts of Iron in the next room.
It was, as Henpecked Ho promised, quite a good story.
“Long ago there was a little girl who lived in a little village with her loving parents. Her name was Jade Pearl. One day the village was raided by bandits, and Jade Pearl was picked up and carried off by a bandit who thought that he might be able to sell her, and several days later they reached a beautiful city, but the bandits were recognized and had to run away and in the confusion Jade Pearl managed to escape.
“The little girl wandered into a park where beautiful flowers were growing, and Jade Pearl sat down beside the loveliest plant of them all and began to weep. Now this was a very long time ago, before men had recognized the ginseng plant for what it was, and the lovely plant beside Jade Pearl was nothing less than the Queen of Ginseng. The queen listened to the sobs of the frightened child and her heart was moved, and when Jade Pearl uncovered her eyes and looked up she saw to her astonishment that a tall woman with a cheerful brown face and laughing eyes was smiling kindly at her.
“ ‘Little girl, are you lost?’ the queen asked.
“Jade Pearl told the kindly woman what had happened, so far as she understood it, and the Queen of Ginseng took her by the hand and told her not to worry because she was going home. Many days later they reached the little village, and the little girl's parents ran out joyfully to greet her, but when Jade Pearl turned to introduce the kindly lady who had brought her home the queen had vanished into thin air. The queen returned to the other plants that grew in the beautiful city, but after a while she realized that she had grown very fond of the little girl and would like to see her again.
“One day Jade Pearl heard somebody call her name, and she ran into a bamboo grove and there was the kindly lady with the laughing eyes. The queen became the little girl's godmother, and visited her often, and it was because of the contact with ginseng that Jade Pearl grew in health and comeliness. By the time she was eighteen she was the most beautiful girl in the whole world, although she did not know it, and it was then that she had another marvelous visitor.
“During the rainy season in Heaven, the Great River of Stars is filled with raging water. The young god who is called the Star Shepherd must stride through the waves day and night, guiding the stars to safety with his long shepherd's crook, but during the dry season he is free to travel as he pleases. One day during the dry season the Star Shepherd decided to visit earth, so he floated down from Heaven and landed beside a small village. He wandered around admiring the sights, and then he came to a lovely grove of bamboo and he found a path and strolled inside. In the center of the grove was a clearing where wildflowers grew, and in the center of the clearing was a pool where tiny fish of many colors swam, and in the center of the pool was a peasant girl who was bathing. Her skin was ivory brushed with honey, and her eyes were black almonds flecked with gold, and her hair was a cloud of soft swirling smoke, and her lips were ripe and full and bursting with sweetness, like plums. There were many other items of interest about the peasant girl, and you may be sure that the Star Shepherd didn't miss any of them. ‘Oh!’ cried Jade Pearl as she saw a face reflected in the water, and when she looked up, the most beautiful girl in the world was gazing at the handsomest god in Heaven.