Chapter Six: Breaking Out

Lu Jing paid his respects to his mother with all due deference, but before he could even explain why he had come, his mother, as though reading his mind, spoke first, gravely: "You are not permitted to go."

"Mother..." Lu Jing felt genuinely wretched inside — he had not even opened his mouth, and already his mother's attitude was so utterly resolved.

"I only want a few cups of tea, Mother. I won't touch the clay again — could you not grant me some leniency, just this once?" Lu Jing gazed at her with pleading eyes.

"When I say you are not permitted, you are not permitted." Her stance remained just as firm.

"The illness is in your body, but the pain is in your mother's heart. I lived through these past days — you might at least try to understand what that was like for me."

Hearing these words, Lu Jing found himself utterly at a loss for anything to say. Whether as the daughter-in-law of the Fanyang Lu clan or as the daughter of the Taiyuan Wang clan, she ought by rights to carry herself with all the airs of noble birth. And yet, these twenty years, because of his illness, his mother had kept vegetarian fasts and chanted sutras, dressed plainly and simply, asking for nothing but that he might live well. How could he not know his mother's heart? Even though he had never seen with his own eyes how she had stayed at his bedside without moving a single step during his high fever, his ears were not deaf — he had heard the servants' quiet murmurs about it too. And so Lu Jing had no choice but to withdraw silently from his mother's courtyard, trudging back to his own room with faltering steps.

Entering his study, Lu Jing's eyes fell at once on that painting, faintly stained by the grease of the food plates — the one he had specifically had the servants frame and hang on the most prominent wall of his study. He gazed at it, lost in thought, remembering the carefree life of the kiln yard, and the corners of his mouth curled up slightly, without his even realizing it.

But his mother's "death edict" was unbreakable — how could he, Lord Seventh Lu, possibly stand against it? Not even the most reckless of servants, the ever-chattering Amo, would dare defy her order — how much less anyone else. And so the faint smile that had just begun to surface on his face sank back down again.

For several days, Lu Jing kept himself "well-behaved," but in the end he could not suppress his longing for the kiln yard. His servants surrounded him in a noisy crowd — every one of them his mother's eyes and ears — and he could not even get past the front gate of the Lu residence. He turned the problem over and over in his mind, and concluded there was only one option: "an alternate path." He would climb out through a window first, then, using the cover of walls and trees, work his way around several courtyards, and finally scale the wall at a low, secluded spot in the residence's southwest corner. Over the following days he pretended to simply wander here and there, all the while secretly scouting a viable route. Fortunately, that loose-lipped Amo noticed nothing unusual, or his whole plan would surely have come to nothing at the very last step.

After three days of reconnaissance, Lu Jing decided the time had come to gamble everything. He sent his attendants away, saying he wished to rest for a while. The servants withdrew as bidden, waiting outside the door. Lu Jing crept stealthily over, shifted a stool into place, and standing on his toes, managed to climb successfully over to the other side. In that moment he counted himself fortunate to be so slight of build and light on his feet — it allowed him to land without making the slightest sound.

And Lu Jing, worthy scion of the Fanyang Lu clan that he was, found his "escape route," so carefully scouted over three days, entirely clear all the way through, and successfully reached the southwest corner of the wall. There, brooms, dustpans, and bamboo baskets used for tending the garden had been left. Over those three days he had settled on his plan: step onto a large bamboo basket to climb over the low wall. So he dragged one over, turned it upside down on the ground, and clambered up on hands and knees. The basket was unsteady underfoot and swayed from time to time; though Lu Jing felt a flicker of fear and his arms grew weak, he still forced himself to keep his balance, gripping the top of the wall with both hands and pushing himself upward. Just as one foot swung over the top of the wall while the other still remained on Lu family ground, a voice suddenly rang out behind him: "Isn't that Seventh Young Master?"

At the sound, Lu Jing was so startled he very nearly fell from the wall. Servants cried out in alarm: "Seventh Young Master, be careful!" And at once a crowd of them surged toward him, shouting for others to come help. In truth, they had come to fetch bamboo baskets to sweep up fallen leaves in the garden, and finding one missing, had looked around and spotted it sitting alone by the base of the wall. Puzzled, they had glanced up — and were utterly astonished to see Lu Jing half-mounted on the wall itself, the sight nearly scaring the wits out of them.

Just as everyone worked to help ease Lu Jing down from the wall, before he could even begin scolding them, an attendant who served the old patriarch approached, bowed respectfully, and announced: "The Old Master commands Seventh Young Master to come to the main hall at once."

Lu Jing felt as though struck by a bolt from the blue — that this bunch of servants had actually gone and disturbed his ever-stern grandfather! He knew at once this boded ill, and, not daring to delay another moment, could only steel himself and head toward the main hall.