Chapter 1

I was a concubine. A concubine from a respectable family.

There was no local tyrant carrying off an innocent girl, and no maiden choosing death before dishonor. My family had a clothing shop in the east of town. Father was a tailor; Mother did embroidery.

A few years earlier, when the country was peaceful and prosperous, Mother had bought a maid. She told our neighbor Auntie Wang that it was time she enjoyed a little comfort. I thought she simply wanted more time for her embroidery. After all, the maid not only threaded her needles and fetched her tea, but washed and cooked for the whole family too.

Naturally, one maid couldn’t manage all the housework herself. So I still did the washing and cooking.

But during the years Great Wei was at war with Liang, business grew harder and harder. And the maid would take two to four hours just to buy a few needles and some thread. Mother decided to send her home.

She wept and promised she would never slack off again, but I knew Mother wouldn’t feed her for nothing. I cooked all three meals anyway. Why keep a maid who only ate our food?

I worked from dawn till dark, washing and cooking, and learned embroidery from Mother whenever I could. She said I could learn, but after I married, I must not sell any embroidery in the east of town for three years.

Well, I thought, then I’d better marry someone in the west. Rich people lived there. Marrying into the west of town sounded quite nice.

The war lasted three years, and I spent all three thinking about that. Then one day Mother sent me to deliver some embroidery to Master Wang’s house in the west of town.

That was how Madam Wang took a liking to me.

Heaven knows I hadn’t done anything sneaky or improper. Madam Wang asked who had embroidered a certain handkerchief. I looked up at it. I had.

Father had told the matchmaker who came a few days before that I would bring a skill to my husband’s household, so he wasn’t giving me a dowry.

But Mother wouldn’t let me sell embroidery in the east of town, and I had no money at all. Surely I couldn’t starve for the first three years of my marriage.

Ahem. Starve might have been an exaggeration. Still, considering the bride price Father was asking, I couldn’t let someone spend those three years pointing in my face and cursing the useless thing he’d bought.

That was what Wang Sanya’s husband called her. And the slaps! We could hear them from our courtyard.

Later, Wang Sanya threw herself into a well.

I didn’t want to throw myself into a well. Being alive was lovely.

So when Madam Wang asked if I was willing to embroider purses for Master Wang alone, I quickly said yes.

At the time, I thought she meant to employ me as an embroiderer. Then I could find a husband in the household. The Wangs were a grand family. Even marrying one of their manservants would mean I need never worry about food or clothing.

Who would have thought that, after several anxious days of waiting, the person who came would be a matchmaker?

Mother was so delighted that never mind Wang Sanya’s house—even Li Xiaocui’s behind ours must have heard her. Mother and Li Xiaocui’s mother had been at odds for decades, after all.

She twisted my ear. “You little wretch! Aren’t you full of ideas, agreeing to become Master Wang’s concubine all by yourself! You really are my daughter, Sun Caifeng’s own girl! What a clever thing you are! With a connection like that, no one will dare cross our family again!”

I squealed and wrested my ear out of her hand. I still couldn’t work out when I had agreed to be a concubine.

Mother said that agreeing to make purses for one man alone meant agreeing to marry him.

She also said that since the mistress of the household herself had sent someone to propose it, I ought to hurry over there in gratitude. If I respected the mistress and kept her happy, I would have a good life.

I didn’t understand. One minute she said all my days ahead would be good, that I was going to live in comfort. The next she said I had to bring money back to her, so I would have something to rely on if things turned bad. So were my days going to be good or bad? If the mistress had sent someone to arrange the marriage and therefore wouldn’t treat me too badly, why did I need to keep the master happy so I wouldn’t have to fear her?

Mother kept contradicting herself. I couldn’t be bothered to listen anymore.

That evening, Father did something rare: he let me eat at the table with him. Smiling over a little wine, he told me never to forget what I owed my parents for giving me life and raising me. The Han family would be depending on me now.

But the last time I burned the flatbreads, when he beat me, what he’d said was, “Can the Han family depend on a worthless girl like you?”

What about Mother, you ask? Ha. After Father tired himself out and went inside, Mother picked up a broom and beat me too, crying as she asked why I hadn’t been born a son.

My fault, was it?

But I digress.

I was a little frightened. I sat in the courtyard with my arms wrapped around myself, feeling the wind. The life ahead of me probably wouldn’t be easy. Otherwise, why did Mother keep telling me to please the master? She had also told me over and over that if the mistress beat or scolded me, I must take it and never fight back.

Fight back? When I was seven, Father lashed me with a bamboo switch. In desperation, I caught hold of it. He kicked me in the stomach three times. After I passed out from the pain, I never dared fight back again.

I had once seriously wondered whether they were my real parents.

After I learned embroidery, I saved my secret earnings for a year and found the midwife who had attended my birth. She said Mother really had given birth to me.

I begged her again and again not to tell anyone. But the very next day, Father found out. Mother sobbed and called me an ungrateful wretch. Father slapped me hard, said I had disgraced him, and gave me nothing to eat for three days.

So I was afraid. Afraid the mistress would beat me. Afraid she wouldn’t let me eat.

But perhaps, being a woman, she wouldn’t hit as hard as Father?

I had to marry anyway. When I delivered the embroidery, the mistress’s room had been so warm. As a concubine, even sleeping in her corridor would be warmer than home. The treats she fed her dog were things I’d never even seen. If I could please her and eat as well as her dog, I would be perfectly content.