Sharing a Pavilion With You
Chapter 57: Seven-Character Quatrains

Chapter 57: Seven-Character Quatrains

It was only a week after the attack, but it felt like a world away. Meili sat next to Sofya in the garden of the Tan mansion.

The Tan family had a tradition of hosting an annual poetry composition contest for the young noblemen in the capital, just before the New Year. It was a famous event for its loveliness, and for producing some great works under the influence of good wine, natural beauty and stiff competition.

A small artificial stream wound its way around the garden, tinkling prettily while it carried along floating trays which held cups of tea or wine, depending on which side of the garden you sat.

The young men, of course, were partaking of the best quality wine. The young ladies sipped on the rarest of teas, nibbling daintily decorated water chestnut cakes.

Bird cages with sweetly singing canaries were hanging artfully on the magnificent ancient pink and white wisteria vines that the Tan family had been training over bamboo structures for generations. A musician played a romantic tune on a guqin, hidden from view.

"Ahhh," sighed Sofya, enjoying the warm sunlight, "how perfect is this?"

She wore a pale lemon dress that was just right for the occasion. Meili thought she looked like a little drop of sunshine. Meili wore a dreamy sky-blue gown she had had made to match the hydrangea yanbin clips she had bought with Sofya.

She didn’t plan to let the memories of that day destroy her enjoyment of her pretty hair ornaments. She would prove to those beasts that they couldn’t change a thing in her world, she thought with determination.

Tan Bowen had already noticed the complementary pairing of the two friends, who looked like the sun and the sky as they sat with their heads together. He was at his best today also, boyishly handsome and in his element.

The Second Prince wore a crisply masculine outfit of clean sharp lines in midnight blue. He looked almost military, and his square jaw and fair skin made him quite ridiculously good-looking.

Tan Wentian sat with Princess Lingling, and she couldn’t help stealing constant glances at the man. He was impervious to such looks and was only interested in the glances of one woman in attendance today. She seemed to be lost in conversation with the grasslands princess and hadn’t looked his way even once.

Bai Li looked uncomfortable and out-of-place. Like a cactus transplanted into the garden of Eden, where his brutish strength and barely suppressed violence made him appear rough and uncouth. He wore black, which in hindsight was perhaps not his best move, he reflected. Most of the other young men, with the exception of the Second Prince, wore white and other light spring colours.

Prince Nur, like Bai Li, wore the look of a seasoned soldier dropped in among the handsome, clean-cut young men, despite his pale blue robe and his hair, which was tied up high on the back of his head before falling in a long ponytail. His shadow of a beard didn’t help matters.

Once they men had sufficient cups of wine under their belts, Tan Bowen as the host, lead off with his first quatrain:

"Her jade-green courtyard curtained with cherry blossoms,

Her pompom blooms that dance with tiny butterflies,

Her hot spring that entices with lazy steam,

Dance, unrelenting, through my dreams."

Meili heard this poem and recognised the courtyard as her own. Her cheeks were immediately suffused with pink.

Sofya’s head swung to stare at Meili. So, this was the culprit who had climbed her rooftops, she thought. Another admirer. Hardly surprising, given her beauty.

"Ohhh, Master Tan dreams of a beauty. How surprising," said Li Pei sarcastically.

Bai Li was instantly suspicious of Tan Bowen. The description of her courtyard had moved from late-winter into spring. He was almost certain Tan Bowen had been back there recently.

"Ahem," he cleared his throat, indicating he would recite a poem next.

Tan Bowen looked at him in surprise. Generally, a poem could only be dragged out of Bai Li at knifepoint.

"Thinking only of his vow that he would crush evildoers,

On the rooftop, clad in silk, one fell.

Arisen from his painful slumber,

His dreams crumbled like his aching bones."

"Well, that’s changed the mood," Li Fengfeng commented, sotto voce.

Tan Bowen blanched, glaring across at Bai Li, who ignored him entirely, staring up at the sky.

Meili was secretly pleased by this response and decided there and then that she would ask Bai Li to patrol her rooftop for her so that she and Sofya could use her hot spring.

Bai Li indicated that the floor belonged to his highness, the Second Prince. He recited his poem with the unshakeable confidence of his rank.

"Stories of passion left him cold,

Like the passing of the breeze.

Until the dawn sun ignited a fire,

That burned in equal parts anger and ardour."

Meili didn’t recognise herself in this poem at all. She did wonder idly how many of the innocent young women at this event the second prince was toying with.

"Oh, well done your highness," clapped Tan Bowen in appreciation. "That will be hard to top. Prince Nur, how about you?" he invited.

The Prince spoke with an exotic northern accent:

"This room at the Nanjing inn,

Is a miserable substitute for the grassy steppes.

Where the moonlight graces the white herd,

And the stars are without end."

Tan Bowen raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Nice, nice your highness. Very evocative imagery of yearning for one’s homeland. Li Pei, what have you got for us?" he offered the Prime Minister’s son the next opportunity to compose a poem.

Li Pei glanced slyly at Mei Meili, who shrank back at his stare:

"Where girls with no thought of an iron cage,

Gaily sip their peach blossom tea.

Next summer will herald the winds of war,

And will have sealed the pearl in the palace."

Bai Li, the Second Prince and Tan Bowen glared daggers at Li Pei, who was clearly enjoying himself. It was only a pity her brothers weren’t here to be needled, Li Pei thought. They were no doubt steering clear of what they knew they’d be beaten at...

Thankfully Meili also missed the point of this quatrain entirely, having no idea who the ’pearl’ was.

Li Fengfeng looked at her with malicious delight, then looked away in disgust when she realised the young woman wasn’t intelligent enough to grasp the poem’s meaning.

The girl wouldn’t last five seconds in the harem. She was like a wide-eyed deer, with the political nous of such a creature. What an unworthy rival!