The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen Read online

  "Honorable Li Kwang," Prince Jen graciously replied, "between you and my good servant, what harm can come to me?"

  Next day, Prince Jen wondered if he had spoken too soon. The royal retinue had been following the River Lan, which Li Kwang intended crossing, thus gaining the easier roads through the western province. A disturbance at the head of the column caused Mafoo to rein in the horses. Moments later, Li Kwang galloped up, dripping wet.

  "My outriders saw an old man struggling in the river," he reported. "They halted to pull him out."

  "They did well," Prince Jen said. "Aiding the elderly is, as Master Hu taught me, one of the Fourteen Excellent Deeds."

  "They failed," Li Kwang replied. ".For all their efforts, my men could not remove him." Li Kwang added that he himself had plunged into the river and failed equally. Even at this moment, the hapless victim still struggled, his strength ebbing.

  Puzzled as to why a simple matter had proved so difficult, Prince Jen impatiently jumped from the carriage and beckoned Mafoo to accompany him. At the banks of the Lan, he hurried down the grassy slope. Half a dozen of Li Kwang's soldiers continued striving vainly to haul ashore a frail, white-bearded figure. Prince Jen quickly realized that the soldiers were hindered by their armor and the quilted skirts of their tunics.

  "Mafoo," Prince Jen ordered, "go yourself and pull him out."

  Casting an uneasy eye at the swift current, Mafoo scrambled down to seize the old man by the scruff of the neck. Soon, however, Mafoo stumbled back to the side of Prince Jen.

  "He's slippery as an eel!" Mafoo cried. "I can't keep hold of him. I must believe he prefers not to be rescued."

  "Then why is he shouting for help?" Surprised at the inability of Mafoo, and seeing that no further moments could be wasted, Prince Jen strode to the water's edge. There, the aged man sputtered and blubbered, desperately begging for someone to save him.

  Prince Jen rolled up the sleeves of his robe and took a firm grip on the skinny hand reaching out to him. Next moment, Prince Jen's arm was clutched with astonishing vigor. Before he could dig in his heels, he found himself pulled headlong into the stream, seized around the neck, and so buffeted by flailing legs that he went spinning and choking to the riverbed.

  • • • • •

  Prince Jen's praiseworthy attempt has only put him in danger of being drowned. The outcome is told in the next chapter.

  3

  • Prince Jen's Patience is Severely Tried •

  • A Meddlesome Passenger •

  • A Muddy Road •

  PRINCE JEN HAD NEVER IMAGINED anyone would be so stubborn about being rescued. Thrashing around in panic, the victim grappled with his would-be benefactor, and his struggles only hindered Prince Jen's efforts to save him. Mafoo and Li Kwang, seeing their master vanish below the surface, were after him instantly. By the time Prince Jen succeeded in getting a firm hold on the old man and bringing him to the water's edge, servant and warrior were on hand to haul him ashore. The object of Prince Jen's good deed at last released his grip and fell in a heap on the grassy slope.

  "Young Lord," said Li Kwang, "I beg you: Never again put your noble person at such risk."

  "Being helpful is one thing," Mafoo added. "Getting drowned is something else."

  Prince Jen had no breath to answer. His robes were sopping, the tide had carried off his gold cap, and he felt that he had swallowed a good portion of the Lan. He gratefully allowed Mafoo to peel away the duckweed entwining him.

  As for the old man, strings of white hair clung to his half-bald cranium and his robe had dredged up mud from the river bottom, but he seemed no worse for his harrowing experience. He shook himself like a wet dog, scuttled over, and knocked his head at the Young Lord's feet, showering him with gratitude and water. It took a few moments for Prince Jen to realize that Master Fu, as he identified himself, had addressed him by name.

  "You and your most excellent and honorable mission are everywhere known," Master Fu replied when Prince Jen asked how he had been recognized. Master Fu explained further, without being asked, that he was a poor wandering scholar, that he had been so absorbed in a treatise on how to travel safely that he had paid more attention to his reading than to his feet and had unwittingly strayed from his path.

  "All has ended well," Prince Jen said, impatient to get into dry clothing and set off again. "Go your way safely."

  Master Fu clasped his hands. "Young Lord, my poor strength is gone. Allow me a little while to regain it. Let me ride with your escort, only a short distance along the road. It would be one of the Eighty-seven Acts of Kindness."

  "There should be an eighty-eighth," put in Mafoo, cocking a sharp eye at the scholar. "Don't impose on someone's good nature."

  Master Fu clapped a hand to his brow. "Forgive me, Young Lord. How did I dare-what could I have been thinking of? I should never dream of delaying you by so much as an instant. What possessed me? To save my wretched self a few steps? No, no, better I should perish ignominiously, shrivel up like a husk on the highway, rather than put Your Lordship to even a moment of inconvenience. Ten thousand blessings on you for saving my ignoble, despicable existence-no matter what becomes of it later."

  Master Fu picked up the staff he had dropped in the process of falling into the river. Snuffling, moaning, holding first his head, then the small of his back, he tottered away.

  "Wait." Prince Jen beckoned him. "Ride with my escort. Go and find yourself a place."

  The old scholar burst out with another ten thousand blessings and made his way up the bank with more agility than he had shown before.

  "For the sake of mercy, what else could I have done?" Prince Jen asked Mafoo, who had come back with dry clothing. "Pitiful creature, I had no heart to deny him. A modest favor."

  "Which he accepted nimbly enough," Mafoo said as they hurried back to the roadside. There, Prince Jen found Master Fu sprawled comfortably in the carriage.

  "Forgive me once more," Master Fu said. "I only wished to rest my aching bones before submitting them to the jolting of the baggage cart, the proper place for this unworthy individual. I shall remove my humble self from your radiant presence, even though I am so weak from hunger my head is spinning. Absorbed in study, I forgot to eat. My sack of food is nourishing the fish in the Lan. No matter, I shall scrape something from a refuse pit and hope to keep body and soul together."

  Master Fu looked so woebegone and truly so close to starvation that Prince Jen ordered Mafoo to fetch food and drink.

  "Only a sip of water," Master Fu insisted. "A handful of millet. Unless there might be a few drops of stale beer. Or a tiny morsel of carp. And if, in your compassionate generosity, you saw fit to add a chicken wing." Mafoo, at Prince Jen's instruction, brought back victuals from the kitchen wagon. By the time the escort set off again, Master Fu, protesting all the while, had downed four pots of beer, two fish, and a whole chicken, along with eight rice cakes. His ability to consume large quantities of food was matched only by his endless chatter. Belching loudly, scratching himself, dripping water over the upholstery, Master Fu never stopped talking. From the moment the procession began wending its way along the road, he rambled on about his cosmological theories, mixing them in the same breath with complaints about his bunions, his poor digestion, and the palpitations of his liver.

  Master Fu suddenly broke off his catalog of ailments and stared around him. "But-but we travel in the wrong direction," he cried. "We are going west!"

  "Indeed so," Mafoo replied. Master Fu's jaw dropped. "Did I neglect to mention that my path lies eastward?"

  "Tiresome old crock!" exclaimed Mafoo, whose patience had been shrinking with each moment in the scholar's company. "You should have spoken up sooner."

  Master Fu turned to Prince Jen. "I have only myself to blame. Through no fault of your own, your munificent kindness has put me in a worse state than before. However, it is the intention, not the result, that gains you merit. No matter that my toes are swollen, my knees trembling. Set me do
wn here, I shall retrace the steps your benevolence made me lose."

  "Excellent idea," said Mafoo.

  "Leave him on the road?" Prince Jen said. "I meant to do him a small kindness, not a great disservice. We will take him where he wishes."

  Prince Jen ordered the retinue to turn east. The grateful Master Fu assured him that the delay would be no more than half an hour's time. Yet, whenever Prince Jen suggested they had gone far enough, Master Fu begged him to keep on a few moments longer.

  Throughout, Master Fu never left off his constant chatter. And, despite his accidental bath in the Lan, he generated an assortment of odors as distressing as they were various.

  "This Master Fu is a pitiful, needy creature," Jen told himself. "Surely, he deserves assistance. Even so, it would have been pleasanter to do a kindness for someone who talked a little less and smelled a little better."

  Master Hu would have judged this thought as uncharitable, so Jen made every effort to tolerate the old scholar. This grew more difficult, for Master Fu proved to be as meddlesome as a monkey. He examined the appointments of the carriage, fingered the upholstery, and peered under the seats. His eyes inevitably fell on the silk-wrapped gifts. Before Prince Jen could stop him, Master Fu seized upon them. He pulled away the covering from the saddle and studied it inquisitively.

  "It is not my lowly place to question the Young Lord," Master Fu said, "but would this be a gift for Yuan-ming? It is a handsome saddle. Yet, allow me to make a humble observation. It puzzles me that the great Yuan-ming should be offered something less than perfect. See here, the cinch belt is broken and has come loose. If Yuan-ming were to use this gift, he might suffer a serious, even fatal, fall."

  Prince Jen was equally puzzled. As far as he knew, the saddle had been undamaged when they had left Ch'angan. Now, clearly, the cinch was broken. As he wondered about this, Li Kwang rode up.

  "It is not practical for us to go farther," he said, gesturing toward brambles and dense shrubbery. Only the narrowest of lanes led where Master Fu had begged to be taken. "Even my foot soldiers would have difficulty following such a path, and many more hours of delay."

  "The difficulty isn't the path, it's the passenger," Mafoo told Prince Jen. "Enough is enough. You saved his life, filled his belly, put up with his yammering, and eased his journey past anything that ancient crackpot could expect. We have two choices: Take him by the scruff of the neck and throw him out, or take him by the seat of his pants and throw him out."

  "I shall burden you no more," put in Master Fu. "I am so close to my destination, barely another half hour. Let me go now on my poor, tottering legs. What difference if my weak old heart fails me and I die in the bushes? Young Lord, with my last breath I shall bless you for your kind intention."

  With Master Fu wheezing, moaning, and already going blue in the face, Prince Jen could not bring himself to follow Mafoo's advice. "We've carried him this far," he said to Li Kwang. "It would shame me not to go the rest of such a little way. The lane is wide enough for my carriage. Mafoo and I shall drive him where he wishes. You and your men wait here."

  Li Kwang, uncomfortable at letting his prince out of his sight, offered to ride with him.

  "There is no need," Prince Jen said. "I would rather you attend to another task." He showed Li Kwang the damaged saddle. "Have one of your men repair this."

  Li Kwang examined the saddle. "It is easily mended. The leather is not broken, it has merely come loose. I myself will see to it, and have it ready by the time you return."

  Mafoo, grumbling, turned the carriage into the rutted lane. "The only good part of this," he muttered, "is that we'll soon be rid of the old geezer once and for all."

  The lane, however, became rougher and rougher. Despite Mafoo's capable hands on the reins, the horses could barely make their way. Lurching and jolting, the carriage went at a snail's pace. Master Fu kept insisting that his destination, the village of Kwan-tzu, lay only moments away.

  Two hours had already passed when, as if out of sheer spitefulness, the bright sky suddenly clouded. Rain bucketed down in such blinding sheets that Mafoo could only let the horses stumble ahead at their own slow gait.

  The lane, difficult enough to begin with, turned quickly into a river of mud. The horses nearly foundered; the carriage slewed from side to side and, with a bone-shattering jolt, stopped altogether. Mafoo shouted and slapped the reins, the horses strained, but the wheels only sank deeper in the mire.

  Cursing under his breath, Mafoo climbed down and put his shoulder to one of the rear wheels, hoping to dislodge it. As the work proved too hard for him alone, he ordered Master Fu to lend a hand and make himself useful.

  "Gladly," Master Fu replied. "No matter that the weather has touched off my rheumatism."

  "Then hold the reins." Prince Jen, frankly wishing he had never laid eyes on the scholar, sprang from the carriage to join Mafoo.

  While Master Fu, sitting dry and comfortable under the canopy, called out words of encouragement, Prince Jen and Mafoo hauled and heaved as best they could. The rain fell harder and the mud deepened.

  "Give it up," Mafoo panted. "We're stuck. There's only one thing to do."

  • • • • •

  Having already been over his head in water, our hero is up to his ears in mud, a situation hardly befitting his rank. What happens next is told in the following chapter.

  4

  • The Yamen of Cha-wei •

  • Voyaging Moon Solves One Problem •

  • Another Arises •

  "I SUGGEST THE FOLLOWING," Mafoo said. "I take one of Master Fu's ankles. You take the other. Then we turn him upside down and stick his miserable head in this mud as deep as we can."

  "How will that move the carriage?" Prince Jen said. "It won't," Mafoo said, "but it will cheer me up considerably."

  "Why blame him?" Prince Jen said, bending all his strength against the sunken wheel. "None of this is his fault."

  "Isn't it?" Mafoo retorted. "If he hadn't fallen into the river, you wouldn't have pulled him out. If you hadn't pulled him out, he wouldn't have begged a ride. If he hadn't begged a ride, we wouldn't have gone out of our way. If we hadn't gone out of our way, we wouldn't be wallowing in muck up to our ears."

  Prince Jen gritted his teeth. Contrary to the instructions of Master Hu concerning respect for the elderly and the Eighty-seven Acts of Kindness, at this moment he would have been delighted to follow Mafoo's suggestion. His fingers itched to seize Master Fu not by the ankles but by the exasperating wretch's skinny neck. Instead, he flung himself against the wheel and strained and heaved beside Mafoo.

  The carriage moved, rolled back a little, and finally lurched free. Mafoo's shout of triumph turned to a groan of dismay.

  "We're no better off," he cried. "Look here. Half the spokes are cracked. The wheel won't hold." Hands on hips, he glumly regarded the disabled vehicle. "We have two choices. We can unhitch both horses and ride back to the main road. Or I take one horse, and you stay in the carriage and wait until Li Kwang sends help."

  "What is the difficulty?" Master Fu had climbed onto the backseat, where he had been observing with great interest the efforts of Prince Jen and Mafoo. "The wheel will hold for a little distance. In Kwan-tzu, it can be repaired while you find shelter. Only a few moments more."

  Prince Jen hesitated. As the rain pelted down, apart from throttling Master Fu, the one thing he most wished for was a roof over his head. Wet and exhausted, he would have been grateful for the roughest comfort.

  "One instant longer than those few moments," he said, "and you will have a heavy account to settle with me."

  "Allow me to disagree," Mafoo said. "I'll be the one to settle his account."

  Master Fu, for once, proved accurate in his claims. The wheel wobbled but did not break. As twilight gathered, Prince Jen saw lights glowing ahead, sooner even than Master Fu promised. An added relief, the downpour stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

  Entering the village of Kwan-tzu, Mafoo trot
ted the horses across a little public square, its ground dry and hard-packed, as if there had never been a rainstorm. He had no need to ask the location of the yamen. The headquarters of the local official was the biggest building in Kwan-tzu, surrounded by high walls, the only entry an iron gate.

  The watchman's jaw dropped in astonishment when Mafoo announced the arrival of the Young Lord Prince. He hurried to fling open the gate and call for attendants to receive the royal visitor. Within moments, a handful of bewildered servants came scrambling out, stunned and mystified by Jen's presence in the village. Mafoo drove the carriage into the courtyard. Stepping down, Prince Jen glanced over his shoulder. He saw nothing of the old scholar. Master Fu, for reasons of his own, must have clambered from the other side of the vehicle and scurried off into one of the alleys. Prince Jen heaved a thankful sigh, not in any way unhappy over Master Fu's disappearance without a word of gratitude.

  The village administrator now came forward. Chawei by name, this Official of the Third Rank looked as mystified as his servants.

  "Young Lord Prince! What a joyful surprise!" Chawei bowed and made every effort to twist his long jawed face into an expression of pleasure. "Still more amazing, you are unharmed. Ferocious bandits-the Yellow Scarves-have been attacking all travelers in these parts. How did you escape such danger?"

  "I saw no bandits," Jen replied. "The only dangers were being soaked to the skin by the rainstorm and my carriage foundering in the mud. A wheel is damaged. Have it repaired. Meantime, I and my servant will change into dry clothing."

  "Yes, yes, Young Lord, as you command. Only forgive me for not offering hospitality at once." Cha-wei wrung his hands and blinked his, close-set eyes. "My astonishment, my relief at your safety, made me forget proper courtesy. Alas, this wretched yamen is illprepaired to offer a fitting welcome. Even so, I beg you to avail yourself of my humble and most unworthy facilities."