“Yellow Sky”: Crisis for the Han Dynasty sample (Act I) -- T. P. M. Thorne
JavaScript is off/unavailable on your browser. You will not be able to experience this website as it was intended without JavaScript enabled.
“If only one could see more than their ill-gotten gains from those towers,” Dou Wu complained. “Daughter, the land suffers. Somewhere right now, a crop is failing. It is the way of things. In times gone by, unrestricted relief would be given… but now, any barely adequate relief that is given may take weeks or even months to arrive, due to a combination of administrative incompetence and misallocated funds… you should not be forced to think about what the people will be forced to do to survive with no food or money, so I shall not ask you to.”
The Dowager thought about it anyway, and grimaced.
“When wanton luxury is given precedence over providing an acceptable standard of living to the common people, whose taxes fund everything, only ruin can result,” Dou Wu continued. “I shall not ask you to think about what people that have been pushed to the limit might be prepared to resort to, but that is because I shouldn’t have to… that is obvious enough.”
“…Father, it is quite clear that there are certain attendants against whom you wish to press charges of corruption, and perhaps even treason,” the Dowager said with trepidation. “This is a delicate matter… perhaps I see, at last, how delicate it is.”
“I am glad,” Dou Wu said with relief.
“If I am to assent to this, it must be done properly,” the Dowager continued. “If you make a formal indictment, then I shall consider it, and how I might act upon it. If you wish to present it to me privately rather than at court, then you may do so. I… should not wish to see you harmed.”
Dou Wu smiled and said, “You shall have it… not straight away, but… soon.”
Dou Wu then met with Chen Fan in the former’s office.
“…Has she agreed…?” Chen Fan asked once it was considered safe for the two men to speak; Chen Fan was concerned that the eunuch Shan Bing had been allowed to join them, but he did not voice that concern.
“She will ‘consider it’,” Dou Wu scoffed. “Sanctimonious, yes - even after I scolded her for humiliating me at court - but nonetheless, she has buckled with regard to her dogged defence of her precious sycophants. Soon, we’ll be rid of them… she will accept the names of the worst offenders in an official indictment.”
“You are to prepare an indictment…?” Chen Fan fretted.
“Oh, that won’t take long,” Dou Wu said with anger and obliviousness to Chen Fan’s true concern. “Four names… four names that will be a good start… I want Cao Jie, Wang Fu, Su Kang, Guan Ba… but then what of Hou Lan, Zhang Rang, Zhao Zhong, Jian Shuo…? …Oh, how I want rid of more than four… but the first four, I can prove their guilt, I am sure of it. Those four should be a good start, indeed… and once they’re gone, then by the Heavens I will have the rest of them as well, even if it takes the next twenty years!”
Dou Wu clutched his forehead as he spoke, which led Chen Fan to ask, “How bad is your headache, Mister Dou…?”
“Bad enough to know that I need this nonsense to end before I am destroyed by worry,” Dou Wu replied. “You can go, Mister Chen: there will not be another good opportunity to speak to my stubborn daughter until late next week at the earliest… you know that the eunuchs always surround her after any private discussion and try to fawn the purpose of the meeting out of her. We can afford to wait… I think I will go and visit family out of the capital, get some air and some distance between me and those accursed creatures for a while.”