Chapter 3

“How will you repair the dikes? Which places will you help first? Once the water recedes, what will you do with the silt in the fields? If someone uses the disaster to raise grain prices or steal relief supplies, which line of the Analects will you use to stop them?”

Grand Tutor Ge’s face reddened. “Empress Dowager, the sages’ teachings are the foundation of a worthy life. How can you compare them to such trivial matters?”

Xiao Yan suddenly looked up and asked in earnest, “Grand Tutor, can learning make more wheat grow? Can it build a waterwheel that turns without an ox?”

Grand Tutor Ge had no answer.

I took Xiao Yan by the hand and helped him up. “From today on, you need not come to Cining Palace, Grand Tutor Ge.”

He was aghast. “Your Majesty means to dismiss me?”

“You may continue teaching at the Imperial Academy. Students seeking office, instruction in policy essays, or lessons in composition are welcome to learn from you. The emperor will have another teacher.”

“Absurd! If His Majesty does not study the sages, is he to learn a craftsman’s tricks instead?”

“Craftsmen repair bridges and build houses. Farmers grow the food that keeps us alive. Soldiers defend our borders. You look down on them, yet think a few empty words make you superior?” My voice turned cold. “Great Yong needs people willing to put the principles in their books into practice and improve its people’s lives.”

Grand Tutor Ge trembled with rage, swept his sleeves back, and left.

Xiao Yan looked uneasy. “Mother, have I made more trouble for you?”

“You asked excellent questions.” I stroked his head. “Whenever someone gives you a principle you don’t understand, ask whether it solves a problem. Keep what does. Throw away anything that serves only to keep people down.”

I had already chosen his new teacher.

Xie Heng was an obscure observer of the stars in the Astronomical Bureau. His father was a carpenter, his mother sold medicinal herbs, and he himself knew astronomy, mathematics, and how to repair waterwheels and bellows. Apparently he was a solitary man who never attended official banquets. He spent the year perched on the observatory, tinkering with brass tubes and wooden wheels.

I summoned him.

He was twenty-seven or twenty-eight, dressed in a blue cloth official’s robe washed almost colorless. He entered, bowed properly, and offered not a word of unnecessary flattery.

“Xie Heng, do you know how to teach children?”

“No.”

The eunuch beside me sucked in a breath.

I laughed. “Excellent. What do you know?”

“How to read the sky, measure land, calculate how many people a store of grain will feed and for how many days, and repair a broken waterwheel.”

“Can you teach those things to the emperor?”

Xie Heng looked at Xiao Yan. Xiao Yan looked back, a little hope in his eyes.

“Yes,” he said. “But His Majesty must do the work himself. His hands will get dirty, his clothes will tear, and when he makes a mistake, he will have to start again.”

“I’m not afraid,” Xiao Yan said at once.

“Settled, then. Starting tomorrow, mornings are for reading and writing. In the afternoons he will study with Master Xie at the Institute of Practical Learning. Ask the Imperial Household Department directly for whatever materials you need. If anyone uses the emperor’s rank as an excuse to stop you, I will deal with them.”

Xie Heng bowed again. “As Your Majesty commands.”

6.

The Institute of Practical Learning had been an abandoned little courtyard, full of scrap metal left over from the previous dynasty.

Xie Heng found the hall far too burdened with rules. He took Xiao Yan straight outside, and on the first day had him squatting on the ground, taking apart a broken windmill.

When I arrived, Xiao Yan’s hands were dusty, and a smear marked his face. He clutched a wooden axle, brows drawn together in frustration.

“Mother, why won’t it turn?”

Beside him, Xie Heng said calmly, “Your Majesty, look at which way the wind is blowing.”

Xiao Yan looked up for a long time, then went to pluck some grass. The blades leaned west. He adjusted the sails, and sure enough, the windmill began to turn.

He nearly jumped for joy. Then he turned, remembered he was the emperor, and pressed his lips together.

I asked deliberately, “Why hold it in? Laugh if you want to.”

Xiao Yan broke into a grin. “Mother, wind really can push things!”

“Yes. There are many things in this world you don’t need to rush to memorize an answer for. Look. Try. The answer will come.”

News of Grand Tutor Ge’s dismissal caused another uproar at court.

This time Pei Shouzhuo did not kneel outside the hall. Instead, he joined several censors in submitting a memorial accusing me of letting the emperor become “obsessed with ingenious trifles,” to the detriment of his sovereign dignity.

I did not rush to summon them for an argument. I asked Xie Heng to make a small waterwheel and set it beside a pond in the Imperial Garden.

Before the spring floods, several irrigation channels in villages outside the capital had silted up. In previous years, people had lifted water by hand, exhausting themselves and wasting time. Xie Heng improved the waterwheel’s paddles, then had Xiao Yan and several young eunuchs test it over and over for days. At last, it could lift water from low ground into higher fields.

One day after court, I invited Pei Shouzhuo, Tang Wushi, and several officials from the Ministry of Works to see it.

The little wheel turned. Water rushed up through a bamboo channel and soaked a small vegetable bed beside it.

Xiao Yan rolled up his sleeves and explained solemnly, “The paddles can’t be too wide, or they’re too heavy. But if they’re too narrow, they can’t lift the water. Master Xie says you have to check how fast the water flows first, then measure how high the field is.”

The Vice Minister of Works crouched to examine it for a long time. His beard almost bristled with excitement.

“If this were used on the dry fields outside the capital, one wheel could save the labor of more than ten strong men!”

Pei Shouzhuo stood well back, looking extremely unhappy.

“Does this count as a toy, Lord Pei?”

He answered stiffly, “There is no harm in His Majesty examining such things occasionally.”

“That isn’t what you wrote in your memorial two days ago.”

Pei Shouzhuo gritted his teeth.

I did not let him off. “Open your eyes before you write your memorials. If you despise every trade that cannot produce an eight-legged essay, who will repair Great Yong’s bridges, plant its fields, and tame its rivers? That mouth of yours, so full of benevolence and righteousness?”

Tang Wushi immediately spoke up. “Your Majesty is entirely right. I have calculated that, if we spread the use of these waterwheels, we could preserve at least twenty percent more of this year’s summer grain crop in the capital region.”

Pei Shouzhuo had nothing left to say.

That night Xiao Yan was too excited to sleep. He ran to me carrying a sheet of paper covered in drawings of gears.

“Mother, I want to build a bigger waterwheel.”

“All right.”

“And I want to put another wheel beside it that grinds grain into flour.”

“All right.”

“Then… can I memorize two fewer pages of Mencius tomorrow?”

I looked at him. “No. You need mathematics, and you need to read and write. When you issue decrees one day, you can’t draw a gear and make all your officials guess what you mean.”

His little face fell.

I put his drawing away carefully. “But when you finish tomorrow’s passage, you may have an extra piece of chestnut cake.”

He brightened at once.

Only then did I fully understand. Xiao Yan did not hate books. He hated a roomful of people cramming words into his head without allowing him a single “why.”

Give him a windmill that could break, a field waiting for water, and he would want to move forward on his own.

7.

In the fifth month, an epidemic did indeed break out in the south.

At first, several villages in Linchuan Prefecture reported diarrhea and high fevers. The illness then spread along the waterways. Local officials concealed it at first. By the time word reached the capital, many people had fallen ill.

The court erupted into chaos.

Some wanted the city sealed, some wanted imperial physicians sent, and some proposed prayers and sacrifices to Heaven. Pei Shouzhuo even suggested that the emperor fast for three days and write the prayer himself.

Behind the curtain, I listened until my temples throbbed.

“Lord Pei,” I said, “the patients are too weak from diarrhea to stand. Will hearing your prayer stop it?”

His face stiffened. “I am speaking of the correspondence between Heaven and mankind—”

“Leave Heaven and mankind aside. Tang Wushi, how much grain remains in Linchuan’s granaries? Xie Heng, what is the fastest passage by boat from the capital to Linchuan? Imperial Medical Academy, do the old case records describe anything similar?”

All three answered.

Tang Wushi said Linchuan had over three months’ grain, but lacked the money to transport medicine.

Xie Heng said seven days with a favorable wind; four for an urgent shipment of medicine in light boats.

The head of the Imperial Medical Academy said old records described a summer epidemic attributed to heat and damp. They recommended boiling drinking water, keeping contaminated materials apart, and medicines such as goldthread, but he could not be certain it was the same illness.

I issued orders at once. Linchuan was to designate treatment wards and register everyone entering or leaving, not seal the whole city and leave people trapped. Set up porridge tents and provide cooked food and boiled water for those still healthy. The counties were to clear silt, fill contaminated wells, and assign workers to burn or bury patients’ soiled clothing and waste. The Imperial Medical Academy would send two teams, one to treat patients and one to record symptoms. The money remaining from the charity auction would buy medicinal herbs, lime, and earthenware jars.

“One more thing.” I looked toward Xiao Yan.

He stood beside the throne, no longer hunching his shoulders.

“There are several saltworks near Linchuan. The people work hard all year and like to drink unboiled water in summer. Send clean jars and teach them to boil their water, then let it cool. Master Xie, can you draw pictures anyone could understand?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

Pei Shouzhuo could not contain himself. “His Majesty is still young. Such filthy matters are hardly suitable—”

Xiao Yan spoke first. “Lord Pei, the people get sick from drinking dirty water. If I don’t even know why they fall ill, what am I doing here as emperor?”

Everyone in the hall turned to him.

I lowered my eyes to hide my smile.

Over the next fortnight and more, Xiao Yan asked about Linchuan every day. He worked with Xie Heng to revise the drawings, turning “boil water,” “wash hands,” and “keep the sick apart” into the simplest possible pictures. They were posted at relay stations along the route.

One night, he read an urgent report about a little girl in Linchuan who had lost both parents. He hugged me around the waist, too sad to speak.

“Mother, have I still not done enough?”

I put down the memorial and took him to the window.

Wind from beyond the palace walls rustled through the scholar trees.

“You can’t keep everyone from falling ill, or prevent every bad outcome,” I said. “When something happens, don’t hide from it, and don’t comfort yourself with fine words. Send the doctors, food, and medicine you can find. Every extra person you save leaves one more family a way to carry on.”

Xiao Yan leaned against me for a long time without speaking.

“Then I’ll have to learn more.”

“All right.”

A month later, the epidemic in Linchuan was under control.

The head physician reported that timely action had kept the outbreak from spreading to neighboring prefectures. The people sent an umbrella of gratitude to the capital, offered on their own initiative. Crooked characters across it read: “Thank you to the little emperor for teaching us to drink boiled water.”

Xiao Yan touched the words, his eyes reddening.

I did not let him take it immediately. I had it hung at the entrance to the Institute of Practical Learning.

“This is not a certificate of merit,” I told him. “It hangs here to remind you that what you learn must be used to help others.”

8.

The epidemic had barely subsided when an urgent dispatch arrived from the northern frontier, carried by the fastest relays.

The northern tribes had massed a hundred thousand cavalry and taken three border cities in succession. The defending commander begged for reinforcements. Food and arms were both running short.

When the dispatch reached my hands, Chongzheng Hall fell cold and still, as though a bucket of water had been thrown over it.

The late emperor had favored civil officials over the military. Everyone had tacitly accepted the border army’s practice of claiming pay for nonexistent soldiers. Now that war had come, the hundred thousand men on paper might not amount to even sixty thousand.

Every minister had a proposal.

The peace faction said the tribes wanted only wealth. A gift of gold and silk might buy several years of peace.

The war faction pounded tables and demanded that the capital garrison be deployed. Not one could explain how many days its provisions would last.

I gripped the dispatch and called on Tang Wushi directly.

“How much silver is actually in the treasury? How much grain in the border stores? Don’t give me pretty figures. I want what we can use.”

His face was pale. “Less than eighty thousand taels in ready silver. The three northern granaries show two hundred thousand shi on the books. I have sent men to check by urgent relay, but I fear no more than a hundred and thirty thousand remain.”

“Seventy thousand shi missing. Who swallowed it?”

“He Chuan, the northern transport commissioner, reported himself ill a few days ago and is staying home.”

I gave a cold laugh. “A convenient time to be ill. Put him in the imperial prison and confiscate his estate to replenish the supplies. Tang Wushi, inspect the northern granaries yourself. Have prefectures along the route dispatch grain according to their distance. Do not wait for one place to assemble the whole shipment.”

“As Your Majesty commands.”

I turned to the Minister of War. “Muster the capital garrison. How many men are fit to fight?”

He swallowed. “About fifty thousand.”

“Lose the ‘about.’ I want the real number before nightfall. Strip every commander drawing pay for ghost soldiers of his seal and arrest him. Can Lu Heng, commander of the border army, still hold?”

“General Lu can hold, but the enemy cavalry are too numerous—”

“A few more days will do.”

Everyone looked at me.

I turned to Xie Heng. “The fire mines I asked you to test. Did they work?”

He was silent for a moment. “Yes. But they are extremely loud and burn fiercely. They have never been used by our army. If the wind turns against us, they may harm our own men.”

“Can you make them suitable for defending a city?”

“Yes. Put them in earthenware jars and bury them beside the trenches outside the walls. Ignite them when the enemy cavalry charge. The mixture, transport, and ignition all require the greatest care.”

The hall broke into an uproar.

Pei Shouzhuo objected first. “Such deadly weapons offend the harmony of Heaven! How can Your Majesty let the emperor become involved?”

I did not even raise my eyes. “Enemy blades are at our gates, and you talk of Heaven’s harmony? Are the lives of the people in our border cities worth less than one of your fine phrases?”

Pei Shouzhuo’s face went livid, his reply cut off.

Xiao Yan had said nothing. He studied the map of the northern frontier spread on the floor. Suddenly he crouched and placed several wooden markers representing supply carts along different roads.

“Mother, the grain carts can’t all take the main road.”

I looked at him.

“It has just rained here, and the road is narrow. Too many carts will jam it.” He pointed to a valley. “Master Xie taught me that water flows downhill, and carts choose the easiest road too. The old salt road is a little longer, but it’s wider. Then people in nearby prefectures and counties can relay the grain in mule carts. It will reach Yanhui Pass sooner.”

The Minister of War leaned over the map, his expression slowly changing.

“The old salt road does lead behind Yanhui Pass. But it has not been used for years. The bridges—”

“Send men to repair the three narrowest first,” Xie Heng said. “If there isn’t enough timber, dismantle abandoned warehouses at the relay stations. Light carts can carry the fire mines and medicine ahead. The heavy grain wagons follow.”

I stared at Xiao Yan.

His small hand rested on the map, cinnabar staining his fingertips. He no longer asked timidly whether he was right. He looked up and waited earnestly for an answer.

“We’ll do it this way,” I said.

Lights burned in the imperial city all night.

I did not send Xiao Yan away to bed. He sat in the side hall with Xie Heng, calculating every route for grain and medicine. He worked slowly, arranging counting rods one at a time. When he made a mistake, he started again.

Every two hours I had hot soup brought in and made him get up and move. After midnight, his eyelids drooped, but he still clutched the counting rods.

“Bed.” I took a wooden marker from his hand.

“But Yanhui Pass—”

“You have me and the court to hold things together. You are eight. Your body gets tired.”

He pressed his lips together, then suddenly asked, “Mother, can I become an emperor who is useful?”

I carried him to bed and tucked him in.

“You already are becoming one.”