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    She hesitated then, smiling, did as he bid her; watching the strange sight of a T’ang pouring ch’a for a commoner.
    ‘Here,’ he said, offering her the first bowl. ‘ Ch’a from the dragon’s well.’
    The T’ang’s words were a harmless play on the name of the Longjing ch’a , but for Ben they seemed to hold a special meaning. He looked at his mother, seeing how she smiled self-consciously and lowered her head, for a moment the youthful look of her reminding him terribly of Meg – of how Meg would be a year or two from now. Then he looked back at the T’ang, standing there, pouring a second bowl for his father.
    Ben frowned. The very presence of the T’ang in the room seemed suddenly quite strange. His silks, his plaited hair, his very foreignness seemed out of place amongst the low oak beams and sturdy yeoman furniture. That contrast, that curious juxtaposition of man and room, brought home to Ben how strange this world of theirs truly was. A world tipped wildly from its natural balance.
    The dragon’s well. It made him think of fire and darkness, of untapped potency. Is that what’s missing from our world? he asked himself. Have we done with fire and darkness?
    And you, Ben? Will you drink of the dragon’s well?’
    Li Shai Tung looked across at him, smiling; but behind the smile – beyond it, in some darker, less accessible place – lay a deep disquiet.
    Flames danced in the glass of each eye, flickered wet and evanescent on the dark surface of his vision. But where was the fire on the far side of the glass? Where the depths that made of Man a man? In word and gesture, the T’ang was great and powerful – a T’ang, unmistakably a king among men – but he had lost contact with the very thing that had made – had shaped – his outer form. He had denied his inner self once too often and now the well was capped, the fire doused.
    He stared at the T’ang, wondering if he knew what he had become; if the doubt that he professed was as thorough, as all-inclusive as it ought to be. Whether, when he looked at his reflection in the mirror, he saw beyond the glass into that other place behind the eyes. Ben shivered. No. It could not be so. For if it were the man himself would crumble. Words would fail, gestures grow hesitant. No. This T’ang might doubt what they had done, but not what he was. That was innate – was bred into his bones. He would die before he doubted himself.
    The smile remained, unchallenged, genuine; the offered bowl awaited him.
    ‘Well, Ben?’ his father asked, turning to him. ‘Will you take a bowl with us?’
    Li Shai Tung leaned forward, offering the boy the bowl, conscious that he had become the focus of the child’s strange intensity; of the intimidating ferocity of his stare.
    Hal was right. Ben was not like other children. There was something wild in his nature; some part of him that remained untamed, unsocialized. When he sat there at table it was as if he held himself in check. There was such stillness in him that when he moved it was like something dead had come alive again. Yet he was more alive – more vividly alive – than anyone the T’ang had ever met.
    As he handed Ben the bowl he almost expected to receive some kind of shock – a violent discharge of the child’s unnatural energy – through the medium of the bowl. But there was nothing. Only his wild imagining.
    The T’ang looked down, thoughtful. Ben Shepherd was a breed of one. He had none of those small refinements that fitted a man for the company of his fellows. He had no sense of give and take; no idea of the concessions one made for the sake of social comfort. His stare was uncompromising, almost proprietorial. As if all he saw was his.
    Yes, Li Shai Tung thought, smiling inwardly. You should be a T’ang, Ben Shepherd, for you’ll find it hard to pass muster as a simple man.
    He lifted his bowl and sipped, thinking back to earlier that afternoon. They had been out walking in the garden when