Chapter 7
Before leaving the capital, I went to see my grandmother.
I told her the truth about Song Wan.
Furious, she sent for my father.
They broke off the marriage arrangement with my aunt’s family.
My grandmother stripped my mother of control over the household and confined her at home.
“For the sake of your own sister, you gambled with our entire family’s reputation!
“You were even willing to ruin your own son!”
My mother hated me to the bone.
“You took the money. You promised!”
I laughed until tears came.
“Only the dead keep secrets. How can you expect the living to?”
With the marriage to the Duke of Ding’s family lost,
my aunt married her younger daughter, Ah Yu, to Wang Heng instead.
Ah Yu had bullied me often enough in the past.
Losing her original marriage drove her wild with rage. She bribed street thugs to rape me.
Fortunately, the covert guards the Princess Royal had given me were there.
They drove the men off.
Still seething, Ah Yu mocked me.
“It’s still a duke’s family. Marrying your former husband isn’t such a bad thing.”
I replied lightly,
“Take your time and savor it. The bad days are still ahead.”
Song Wan was no easy woman to deal with.
My uncle told them,
“As long as Ah Wan lives, she’ll remain a threat. Neither family will have any peace.”
After Ah Yu married into the household,
she poisoned Song Wan.
She had been cruel from childhood and never hesitated when she acted.
Over the years, countless maids had died at her hands.
The people I had left in the Duke of An’s residence saved Song Wan in time.
How could she die?
She mustn’t die.
She was my weapon against them.
Only while she lived
would my aunt’s family continue to suffer.
Before long, news came from the duke’s residence that Ah Yu was dead.
I marveled.
They truly were sisters.
Just as ruthless. Just as swift.
Neither hesitated to act.
My aunt cried out in horror and came running to my house.
How strange.
She didn’t go after Song Wan.
She came to fight me instead.
The covert guards the Princess Royal had left with me restrained her.
Looking at her face, streaming with tears and mucus,
I smiled.
“So you know what it is to grieve?”
She sobbed as if her heart were breaking, then hurled her threats at me with nothing left to lose.
“I was pretending! I was never mad! I did it on purpose!
“I’d lost my daughter. I wasn’t going to let your mother have any peace either!
“But you were so useless. She didn’t care about you at all.
“No matter how I tormented you, she didn’t care.
“No… At first she did. But once she was pregnant with your brother, she stopped caring.
“Before long, she gave you a younger sister too.
“I asked her for your sister. I told her to exchange that child for you. Did you know that? She refused!”
She burst into laughter.
I felt nothing.
My mother probably had only a few months left to live, after all.
The good life my daughter and I would share was about to begin.
The ones who survived were the victors.
Why bother arguing with the dead?
She glared at me, laughing.
“Why won’t you speak? You’re heartbroken, aren’t you?
“So what if Ah Yu is dead? It’s still my daughter married into the duke’s family. You’re nothing but a discarded wife.
“Ah Wan is already carrying Wang Heng’s child.
“The Wang family have had her examined. It’s a boy. Once they have him, they won’t remember your daughter.”
I neither agreed nor disagreed.
I didn’t care.
Because
there was no medicine in this world that could cure venereal disease.
There were only powerful drugs that could suppress it for a while.
The corners of my mouth lifted.
I ordered my aunt thrown out.
After checking our luggage, I took my leave of the Princess Royal.
She sent household troops to escort me to her fief.
I lifted the carriage curtain and watched the capital recede behind me.
I couldn’t help smiling.
Before long, I thought, Wang Heng would begin to itch all over, his body oozing pus.
Then,
compared with his own life, all that talk of debts and gratitude would mean nothing.
He and Song Wan would tear each other apart.
And the Wang family would certainly not spare my aunt’s family.
What a spectacle it would be.
It was just a pity
I could not stay in the capital to watch.
My daughter asked curiously,
“Mama, where are we going?”
I pinched her round little cheek.
“Somewhere free of quarrels, where we can live in peace.
“We have lots of money. We can live just as we please for the rest of our lives!
“No one to bully us. No one’s moods to tiptoe around.”
My daughter clapped.
“Yes, yes! As long as I’m with you, Mama, I’ll be happy wherever we go!”