13

ETERNA SELLS MUD CANDLES AND SEDUCES WANG ZE;

PRIESTESS PIA TEACHES WANG ZE HOW TO PLAN A REVOLT.

POEM:

The demonic magic works its wonders;

The immortals’ wisdom it can outdo.

Consider these candles Eterna makes—

From dusk to dawn they last the whole night through.

Li Two should never have informed on the priest for the sake of a thousand-string reward. However, after obtaining that reward and using it as capital to open up a fruit shop, he should have repaid the favor the priest had done him. Instead of which he deliberately offended the priest when the latter came begging for a meal.

That day he was thrown down from the top of the flagpole directly in front of Prefect Bao, who saw that he had fallen headfirst and that the force of the impact had driven his head right into his chest. How tragic! Might his spirit partake of the sacrificial offerings! Li’s wife burst into a loud sobbing. Needless to say, she had to get people to carry the corpse back home for the laying in. And there we shall leave her.

Meanwhile, as the priest sat on a stool on top of the flagpole, the sea of spectators grew larger and larger. Many of them started to clamor, and Bao’s men could not quiet them down. Bao surveyed the situation, but he had no idea how to arrest the priest. He would have had the flagpole chopped down, but whereas the flagpoles in all the other temples were made of wood, this one was cast in bronze—hard though it is to imagine how a hundred-foot-long pole could ever have been cast.

As it happens, this Xiangguo Temple had three famous historical sites. There was a well in front of the Buddha Hall that was three hundred feet deep. It was equipped with a rope woven of human hair and a bucket that was painted black with these characters on it in red: “For Public Use in the Great Xiangguo Temple.” One day the rope broke, and the well bucket could not be retrieved. Later, someone returning from a voyage overseas came to the Xiangguo Temple and said, “I was a passenger on a ship traveling in the Eastern Sea when I saw a well bucket floating on the surface of the water. The sailors pulled it out, and on it were the characters ‘For Public Use in the Great Xiangguo Temple.’ As we gazed at it, the waves sprang up and almost capsized our ship. I at once took a vow to return the bucket to the temple, and the waves promptly subsided. I am now fulfilling that vow.” This incident shows that the temple well is directly connected to the Eastern Sea.

In front of the temple gate there is a bridge called the Yan’an Bridge. From it the temple appears to be down at the bottom of a well, but viewed from the temple, the bridge appears to be a hundred yards or more lower than the temple’s own foundations.

Together with the bronze flagstaff that was impervious to axe and saw, these were the temple’s three famous historical sites.

As the priest continued to taunt him from the top of the flagpole, Prefect Bao became highly indignant, but there was nothing he could do about it. Then suddenly an idea occurred to him, and he ordered a hundred archers to be summoned from the camp. A messenger promptly called the men, and Bao told them to surround the flagpole and shoot at the top. Among the archers there were some good marksmen, and they shot at the priest, but he managed to protect himself with his sleeves. Then just as Bao was at a loss as to what to do, a Daoist priest came to see him. “What do you have to tell me?” asked the prefect.

“I saw how offensive that demon priest was, and I’ve come specially to offer you a plan to capture him.”

“And what plan do you propose, Master?”

“He’s a demon priest, so you should dip your arrowheads in a mixture of pig’s and sheep’s blood, horse urine, and garlic before you shoot at him. That way he won’t be able to use his black magic.” The priest gave a bow and departed.

Prefect Bao ordered that pig’s and sheep’s blood, horse’s urine, and garlic be procured, and his staff went off in different directions to get it. The prefect had them mixed together and told the archers to dip their arrowheads in the mixture. Then at the sound of a clapper, all one hundred bows let fly. Had they not done so, nothing untoward would have happened, but one hundred arrows sped toward their mark, and a great roar arose among the thousand or more people watching from inside and outside the temple as they saw both priest and stool come tumbling down out of the sky.

“If he’s not killed, he’s bound to be crippled for life!” they cried.

However, there was a pond on the west side of the temple, and the priest fell fair and square into the middle of that pond. The constables dragged him out and at the pond’s edge poured a bucket of pig’s and sheep’s blood over his bald head before they tied him up. Prefect Bao then took a sedan chair back to his yamen and gave orders that the priest be brought before him under guard.

“Confound you, demon priest! You had the gall to come here to the imperial capital and use your demonic arts to harm the people. What do you have to say for yourself, now that we’ve caught you?” He ordered that the Number 1 cangue be brought out and the priest placed in it, then had him taken under guard to the interrogating officer of the Right Army, who should find out his name and place of origin. In case he had followers, a thorough investigation must be made and the followers arrested. Having given these orders, the prefect went off to rest.

Because of the urine and blood covering his body, the priest could not employ his demonic arts. He was escorted by a squad of constables from the prefect’s yamen to the interrogation department of the Right Army. The officer in charge said to the priest, “On the orders of His Honor the prefect, I am going to question you about your activities. You must have been staying in a monastery. How many others are in league with you? Very well then, since I can’t get anything out of you …” He told the warders to pull the priest down and thrash him. They tied his feet to the end of the cangue bar so that he couldn’t budge and subjected him to three hundred severe strokes of the rod. However, the priest did not utter a word, nor did he cry out in pain, and when the officer took a closer look, he found that the man was asleep and snoring. “That’s incredible!” he muttered, and called on the jailers to lock the priest up in prison and bring him out later for interrogation. From then on he was beaten three times a day, until the jailers themselves reached the point of exhaustion. The priest, however, continued to act unconcerned and refused to say anything. Whenever they beat him, he would go off to sleep. After the officer had interrogated him for over ten days, he felt utterly frustrated and had to report as much to the prefect: “Sir, I received your order several days ago to interrogate the demon priest. He has been beaten three times a day, but whenever he’s beaten, he goes off to sleep. This sort of demon priest is truly difficult to interrogate, but if we keep him in jail, I am afraid we shall face serious trouble in the future. I respectfully await your order.”

“What’s the point of keeping a demon priest like that in jail?” asked Bao. He promptly issued a written order setting the appropriate sentence according to the law: the priest was to be taken out to the marketplace and beheaded. The officer on duty had him escorted out of the jail and rushed to the execution ground. The placard stating his conviction read as follows: “For deliberately murdering Li Two and practicing the demonic arts in the Eastern Capital, for harassing and harming the public, the criminal known as Pellet Priest is hereby sentenced to be beheaded according to the law.” People living both inside and outside the capital heard that a demon priest was about to be executed, and all the vendors shut down their businesses and went to watch. The spectators were packed together all along the route as the executioners, with the placard carried in front and the armed guards following behind, escorted the demon priest out of the offices of the Right Army.

When they arrived at a point not far from the center of the marketplace, the priest halted. “Be a good fellow and keep going,” said the executioners. “Why have you stopped?”

“Gentlemen, it was wrong of me to upset the prefect, and I am now paying the penalty. But officers! Just up ahead there’s a tavern that sells wine! Get me a cupful before I depart this life!” The executioners could hardly refuse his request; they asked for some wine and brought a dipperful back for him. He put his lips to the dipper and drank most of the wine, after which the escorts urged him to start walking again. However, the priest had retained some of the wine in his mouth, and when they approached the execution ground, he spat it up into the sky. It was a clear day, but out of nowhere a storm sprang up, and as the gale raged, a black fog blanketed the execution ground, and stones and pieces of tile pelted down on the spectators’ heads, causing them all to flee. Before long the gale subsided and the fog lifted, but when the jailers and executioners and the official in charge looked at the priest, they found that he had burst his bonds and disappeared. Although they searched for him everywhere, they found no trace of him. From the officer in charge down to the jailers and executioners, they were all desperately worried: “I’m afraid the prefect will blame us for letting that priest get away, and we’ll all suffer for it.” But they could not avoid their duty to report the incident. When Bao heard, he mounted his tribunal, and the officer in charge along with the others who had escorted the priest admitted their error and asked to be punished. But Bao, who realized that with the appearance of demons the court would need to use armed force, was reluctant to subject people to indiscriminate prosecution, and so he freed them all. That night he wrote a memorial to the court stressing that if the problem were dealt with at an early stage it would be comparatively easy to solve, but that if the demons were allowed to multiply, they would be a great deal harder to suppress. The court duly issued an imperial order that inspections be carried out throughout the country, in all districts and villages, and that great care be taken to investigate and suppress the demons.

The order reached Beizhou in Hebei province, where the proclamation was hung up in front of the prefectural yamen, a particularly busy area. There was a young woman there wearing mourning dress and carrying a basket who walked to and fro in front of the yamen some five or six times. Had she been plain looking, no one would have followed her, but although she was not dressed up, she was strikingly beautiful. There were idle characters standing about, and one of them said to her, “Sister, I’ve seen you walking to and fro half a dozen times. Why are you doing that?”

“To be honest with you, brother, I lost my husband and have no way of making a living. I possess just this one skill with which I can earn three or four hundred cash to live on.”

“And what skill might that be, sister?”

“Unless I have an empty space, I can’t show you. I can only do it if I have a space.”

The man chased away the musicians and gamblers. “Here’s a good spot,” he said. “The buskers have been using it. You’ll do well here.”

She sat herself down on the ground and crossed her legs, while twenty or thirty men stood around, drawn first by her beauty and second because she was about to put on a show. “I wonder what she’s selling,” they said to themselves.

They watched as she took a bowl out of her basket and said to them, “Gentlemen, I’m no street performer, nor can I sell medicines or tell fortunes. Since I lost my husband I’ve been at my wits’ end, and I need to come out and earn twenty or thirty cash every day. Would one of you brothers like to take this bowl and fill it up with water for me?”

“I’ll go!” said one youth. He was back in no time with a bowl of water.

“I wonder what she’s selling that she needs water for,” said the spectators.

The woman opened the basket and took out a glistening knife.

“Perhaps she knows how to do magic tricks,” said one of the spectators. They watched as she dug up some soil with the point of the knife, loosened it, poured half the water into the middle of the soil, and made a lump of mud. From the basket she took several bamboo strips and, kneading a piece of the mud, worked one of the strips into the form of a candle. Then she kneaded another piece of mud and worked another strip of bamboo into a second candle. Before long she had made ten candles, all arranged on the ground. The spectators pressed closer and began scoffing at her efforts. “For no earthly reason we’ve let ourselves be deceived by this woman! She’s taken all this time, shown no skill whatsoever, and stupidly produced a few mud candles. What good are they?”

“Shut up!” said someone else. “She looks as if she knows what she’s doing.”

They watched as she washed her hands in the water left in the bowl and said, “After I lost my husband, I had no way to get by, but I don’t want to be too greedy, just to make three cash on a candle. Here are ten candles, which I’ll sell for thirty cash. If you light one of them in the evening, it will last you until dawn.”

The spectators laughed. “She’s making fun of us Beizhou locals! How can you light mud candles when they’re freshly made and the mud’s not even dry? She’s obviously making fun of us!” No one came forward to buy any of the candles.

When she saw that no one wanted to buy her candles, she said, “How suspicious you Beizhou people are! Do you really think I’d tell a lie just to cheat you out of three cash? Which one of you will go and get me a light?” A certain Master Shen, an idler from the city morgue,1 offered to go to the tea shop for an ember, which he handed to the woman. She took a sulfur taper from her basket, lit it from the ember, and then lit the tops of the mud candles.

The audience burst into applause. “What a wonderful trick! A damp mud candle that can be lit, and it costs only three cash! Of course we’ll buy one!”

One enthusiastic customer took out three cash and gave them to her. She accepted the money, picked up one of the candles, blew it out, and handed it to him. In no time at all the ten candles had been sold. She got to her feet, gathered up the knife and the bowl and put them in her basket, curtsied to the spectators, and left the scene.

The following day she was back at the same space, and people crowded around to watch. “Yesterday thanks to you I managed to sell thirty cash worth of candles, and I had enough to live on for a day. Now I’ve come back to impose on you once more.”

“Truly amazing!” they said. “Yesterday we bought a candle for three cash, and it really did last all night. The light was brighter than that of any lamp, and we saved ten cash on oil.”

The woman asked for water, dug up some more soil, and made another ten mud candles.

“You don’t need to light them!” said the crowd of spectators as they competed with one another to buy the candles. When she had made another thirty cash, she packed up and left. From then on she came every day. The candles had barely left her hands before someone bought them, but each day she sold only ten. Within half a month she had created a sensation among the people of Beizhou, who said, “There’s a woman in front of the yamen who makes candles that not only last longer than other candles but are brighter as well.”

One day she was at the same place and had made half the day’s candles when someone came walking out of the yamen. The spectators saw that he was a professional army officer2 named Wang Ze, assigned as an aide to the prefect. On this occasion he had come to the yamen at the fifth watch to register and now, having finished his day’s work, was coming out again when he noticed a crowd of people gathered in a circle watching something. Standing on tiptoe, he saw that it was a woman in mourning dress who was sitting on the ground. When he looked at her more closely, this is what he saw:

In a plain white dress

And mourning skirt;

With neither powder nor rouge

Her naturalness enchants;

Without adornment of any kind,

Her inborn beauty dazzles.

Her hair puffs half in place,

A face to make fish dive and birds fall from the sky;

Starry eyes full of tenderness,

Beauty to humble the moon and put the flowers to shame.

Like Chang’e3 come down from the Moon Palace,

Like Weaving Maid4 descending from the Jasper Pool.

“What’s that woman doing over there?” Wang Ze asked his attendant.

“She’s selling mud candles, sir,” said the attendant.

“I’ve been busy every day in the yamen, but for some time I’ve been hearing talk of a woman selling mud candles. A fellow officer told me he bought one and lit it, and it gave off a bright light. I meant to ask him why it’s called a mud candle.”

“It’s an amazing story,” said the attendant. “She digs up some soil, mixes it with water, kneads it around a bamboo strip until it looks like a candle, and then lights it from a lamp. It lasts from dusk until dawn.”

How very strange, thought Wang Ze. I’ve always enjoyed magic tricks, but this one is truly astonishing. He squeezed his way through the crowd and saw the woman, who had finished her work and was washing her hands. “These candles of mine sell for three cash apiece,” she said as the spectators fought with one another to buy them.

“Stop!” shouted Wang Ze. “Don’t buy them, any of you!” The spectators knew that Wang Ze was a professional army officer, and when he said, “Don’t buy!” they didn’t dare disobey.

The woman looked up, saw Wang Ze, and rose to her feet, greeting him and curtsying. He bowed in response.

“You make candles out of mud, but how do you get them to light up?” he asked.

“Sir, I’ve been selling them here for half a month now, and if they didn’t light up, people wouldn’t come asking for them. I make only ten a day, but I still wouldn’t be able to sell any.”

“Now, don’t try to fool me!” Wang Ze said. He put his hand inside his lapel, took thirty cash from his wallet, and bought all ten candles. As she handed them to him, he said, “Just a moment! If I buy them and they don’t light up, I’ll have wasted my money. It’s not that I don’t believe you, but I haven’t actually seen them yet. Light one up and show me.”

“That’s simple enough. Just send someone for an ember.” Wang Ze told his attendant to go and get one and give it to the woman. She used it to light a taper and then lit all ten candles for Wang Ze to see.

He was effusive in his praise. “Splendid! That’s truly amazing! But I don’t need the ten candles myself. If you people would like them, please help yourselves.” The spectators took the candles and went off. Meanwhile the woman got to her feet, gathered up the knife and bowl and put them in her basket, then curtsied to everyone and left the scene.

Wang Ze sent his attendant back and then followed the woman at a leisurely pace. She’s not one of us Beizhou people, he thought to himself; I expect she lives in the village market. I think I’ll follow her to her place and offer to pay for some lessons in this kind of magic. The woman went through West Gate, past the village market, and kept on walking. If she doesn’t live in the market, I wonder where she does live, Wang Ze asked himself. She walked on for another three or more miles, to a place that Wang Ze did not recognize. She really is the strangest person, he thought. I think I’ll go back and wait till she comes to sell her wares tomorrow and then ask her where she lives. He turned and was about to go back when he saw that the road before him was different from the one he had come on. Sheer cliffs towered up, and tall mountains blocked all passage; there was no way to return, and there were no people about whom he could ask. In his state of alarm, he heard the woman ahead of him shouting, “Officer Wang! I had a hard time getting you this far. Why do you want to go back so soon?”

He was so terrified that he started to tremble. “Madam, who are you?” he asked, approaching her.

“Officer, Priestess Pia sent me to invite you to discuss certain great issues. There’s no need to be suspicious—I’ll go with you.” How strange, thought Wang Ze. He would have liked to go back, but he had lost his way and had no choice but to follow her. They entered a pine forest and then after a long time wound their way through it and came to a manor house.

“What is this place?” asked Wang Ze.

“This is where Priestess Pia lives. She’s been waiting for you for a long time.”

As Wang Ze arrived at the manor house, out came two maidservants dressed in black. “Is this gentleman Officer Wang?” they asked.

“Yes,” said the woman.

“The priestess has been waiting for you for a long time,” said the maidservants, leading Wang Ze into the lower part of the hall. “Officer Wang is here!” they reported.

Wang Ze saw an old lady wearing a star headdress and a robe woven of crane’s down5 who was sitting at the head of the hall.

“This is the priestess,” said the woman who had brought him. “Why don’t you pay your respects?” Wang Ze bowed low, and the priestess called him up to the head of the hall, where the three of them sat down together. She ordered tea to be served, and when they had finished their tea, she told the maidservants to serve him wine. Wang Ze was of an ambitious nature, and he was flattered by all the attention he was receiving.

“It was fate that enabled me to meet you today, priestess,” he said, adding, “I wonder what wisdom you care to impart.”

“Let me discuss it with you as you drink your wine. The destined moment is now upon us, and you fit the design of heaven—you’re bound to make a great name for yourself. Of the thirty-six prefectures in Hebei province, you are destined to become sole ruler.”

“You shouldn’t say such things, priestess,” said Wang Ze. “The eyes and ears of the authorities are everywhere. I’m merely a soldier stationed in Beizhou—how could I aspire to become ruler of the thirty-six prefectures?”

“If you didn’t have that particular good fortune in store for you, I would never have sent anyone to invite you here. I’m just afraid that you may let this opportunity slip, which would be a great pity! And there is one other thing. I’ve been worrying that you’ll be all on your own and will need someone else’s help in order to succeed.” She pointed toward the woman who had sold the mud candles and said, “I have this daughter named Eterna, a virgin, who is your predestined lover from five hundred years ago. Marry her now, and she’ll help you in your task. What do you say?”

Wang Ze was secretly thrilled. My own wife died last year, he reflected. If today the priestess gives me this beautiful girl in marriage, it is surely a heaven-sent destiny. “Thank you, priestess, for your kindness,” he said. “I wouldn’t dare to decline. A few years ago I met a holy man who predicted that I would eventually make a great name for myself; he even tattooed the word ‘Blessed’ on my back. The favor you are doing me now confirms his prediction. There is one problem, however. The prefect of Beizhou, confound the man, asked me to buy him a lot of articles of gold and silver, silk and satin but then refused to pay the shopkeepers for them. All the trades and professions suffered, and they’re seething with resentment. The officers and men of the two battalions stationed in Beizhou have served for three months, but this prefect has refused to issue even one month’s pay. If they opposed him, they wouldn’t stand a chance—he has far too much influence at court. My fellow officers and I have suffered countless wrongs at that man’s hands, but if we don’t have the strength to drive out one tyrannical official, how can we hope to succeed in the great enterprise?”

The priestess smiled. “You can’t act on your own, you know. You would need to rely on your wife. She has a hundred thousand men and horses under her command to help you, and together with her you could certainly succeed in rebelling.”

“I’ve heard that an army on the march needs a thousand in gold every day,” said Wang Ze with a smile. “And when they stop anywhere for even a little while, all the rivers and lakes run dry. With so many men and horses, you would need a vast amount of provisions. And no matter how large this manor house is, where would you quarter a hundred thousand men and horses?”

The priestess smiled. “Our men and horses don’t need provisions or quarters. When there’s an urgent need for them, they’re put to use; otherwise, they’re put away.”

“It would be all very fine, if that were the case.”

“Let me show you our men and horses.” She told Eterna to go in and fetch two small baskets, one full of beans, the other full of snippets of rice straw. Eterna took some beans and some straw between her fingers and scattered them around, shouting, “Presto!” as she did so. The beans and straw turned into two hundred or more mounted men at the front of the hall.

Wang Ze applauded. “Since you have the skill to turn straw into horses and beans into soldiers, we need have no fears about the great enterprise.”

As he said these words, shouts were heard from outside the manor house. “Such fine goings-on in there! The authorities have just put out notices calling for the arrest of demons, and here you are making horses out of straw and soldiers out of beans, preparing to start a rebellion!” Terrified by the shouts, Wang Ze felt as if his cranium had been opened up and half a bucket of ice and snow poured inside it.

Before the plot was hatched, how was it heard outside?

With the plans barely made, trouble breaks out at home.

Truly,

You may draw up plans of cosmic scope,

But eavesdropping you cannot prevent.

Who was this newcomer? Turn to the next chapter to find out.