Chapter 4
Chapter 4
A fine rain fell for half the day.
I was struggling to move several half-dead plants indoors when footsteps sounded through the rain.
I looked up. Yuan Xingjian stood beneath the covered walk, one shoulder of his dragon robe dark with water.
With a wave, he had left his distant procession outside.
“Why are you moving those yourself? Where are your maids and eunuchs?”
I set down the pot, stood, and bowed.
“Your Majesty, Little Shunzi’s adoptive father is ill, so this concubine let him go tend to the man. Xiaoli and Xiaoping are still young, so I told them to shelter from the rain. Falling sick over a few flowerpots is not worth it.”
He laughed. “You take good care of your people.”
I wiped mud from the rim of the pot with my sleeve.
“Not really. My allowance is small. If they fall ill, I cannot afford an imperial physician.”
The words were blunt but carried no resentment, only candid humor.
Yuan Xingjian laughed again. “Do you still have osmanthus wine?”
“I do. Whenever Your Majesty comes, there will be as much as you want.”
The wine bubbled over a small stove. Its sweetness drifted from the back room and mingled with the damp scent of rain.
He dismissed everyone, took a sip from the bowl, and sank into his chair. For a long while, he said nothing.
I did not hurry him.
Rain rang against the roof tiles. As if remembering something, he began to smile.
“When I lived in Tianshui Village, there was a crooked osmanthus tree by the entrance. When it flowered, half the village was fragrant.
“Back then, the empress was not called Yuke. Her name was Saihua.”
He took another drink and gazed through the rain, though it was not the rain he saw.
“I remembered nothing then. When I woke, I was lying on a broken plank, covered in wounds, with a headache that felt as if my skull were splitting.
“She stood beside me holding a bowl of black medicine, wiping its rim with her sleeve. Her sleeve was dirtier than the bowl.
“I asked where I was. She said, ‘My house.’ I asked who she was. She said, ‘Your wife.’
“I told her I did not remember marrying her. She shoved the bowl into my hands and said, ‘Drink. You will remember when you finish.'”
His quiet laugh merged with the thickening rain.
He told me many things.
He laughed as he spoke, but moisture gathered in his eyes.
He had been the late emperor’s seventh son. His mother was an untitled palace maid confined to the Cold Palace.
In the year of his birth, the late emperor favored the Noble Consort’s third son. The Imperial Household Department cut the charcoal allotted to the Cold Palace room in half.
His mother caught a chill during her confinement and never recovered. She did not survive that winter.
He grew up in a side hall of the Cold Palace.
No one taught him to read. He slipped into the imperial library and crouched beneath the shelves, reading by the sliver of light that entered through a window.
No one taught him riding or archery. He shaved branches into a bow and practiced against the palace wall.
When the Grand Tutor lectured the princes, he listened outside the door, then returned to write everything from memory until his fingers went numb with cold.
Later, he learned to hide his intelligence and ambition.
He volunteered for every bitter campaign no one else wanted: fighting the Northern Di, pacifying the southwest, reclaiming Hexi. Little by little, military power passed into his hands.
Then the elder brothers who had once barred his way disappeared from the court one after another.
By the time the late emperor lay old and ill in bed, he opened his eyes and found that only one son remained.
Yuan Xingjian personally led the final campaign.
He won, but fell from his horse and struck his head on a rock.
When he woke, his past was gone.
Hu Saihua found him by the river.
He lay among the stones with a hole in his forehead and old scars beneath his armor. She dragged him home, cleaned his wound with strong liquor, and tore apart her old clothes to bandage him.
He burned with fever for three days and nights.
She stayed beside him, wiping his forehead with a damp cloth and muttering, “You had better not die. If you do, who will repay me for the medicine?”
His fever broke on the fourth day. When he opened his eyes, she was beside the bed with a bowl of rice broth.
That year was the most carefree of his life.
He farmed, fed chickens, patched the leaking roof, and crouched beside her on the ridge between fields to eat raw pumpkin.
She got mud all over her mouth and still tried to steal his half. He held it out of reach. She jumped for his arm until she tripped into the paddy. When she crawled out with muddy water in her hair, she pelted him with clods of earth.
He did not dodge.
It was the only period of his life when he did not need to fight or scheme.
Then his memory returned.
On the day he set out to retake the capital, she stood beneath the crooked osmanthus tree at the village entrance. She stuffed his old clothes into a bundle, tied an impossible knot, and said, “If the new clothes don’t suit you, come home. I will keep the chickens for you.”
He did not look back.
When she reached the capital, he waited at the palace gate.
She stared up at the crimson walls and turned to ask, “The walls are so high they hide the sky. Don’t you feel trapped in there?”
He said, “Now that you will be with me, I won’t.”
Hu Saihua sounded too common. Believing the name unworthy of her, he renamed her Yuke – a stone of beauty, a stone resembling jade.
On the day of her investiture, she wore magnificent phoenix robes, and the crown was so heavy that it stiffened her neck.
Upon the crimson imperial steps, she whispered, “These clothes are too heavy. I cannot walk.”
He gripped her hand. “If you cannot walk, I will lead you.”
The entire civil and military court knelt below.
He had thought he could give her half the world.
But she had not wanted it.
Rain struck the tiles. I pushed the bowl toward him.
“Your Majesty, the wine is growing cold.”
He opened his eyes and looked around in confusion.
“Lingzhao, I gave her the whole world. What else did she want?”
I stirred the ashes with the fire tongs.
“Her Majesty wanted the Yuan Xingjian who belonged to her alone. Your Majesty wanted to be the Yuan Xingjian who could secure the realm beneath her feet.
“It was not that Your Majesty gave too little. What the two of you wanted no longer lay in the same place.”
I lifted the bowl and offered it to him again.
“Your Majesty gave everything you could. If you gave any more, would Your Majesty still be yourself?”
The bowl slipped loose in his hands.
He lowered his head and buried his face in his palms.
“Then what am I supposed to do, Lingzhao? Tell me. What am I supposed to do?”
I went around the table and gathered him into my arms.
“If Your Majesty does not know what to do, then do nothing.
“In the Hall of Quiet Reflection, Your Majesty need not be the Son of Heaven. You may simply be a tired man who sits down, drinks a bowl of wine, and plays a game of Go.”
His shoulders began to shake. Warm salt slowly soaked through the cloth over my chest.
After a long time, he raised his head.
“Lingzhao.”
“Yes.”
“Lingzhao.”
“I am here.”
Our burning breaths tangled. Kisses fell thick and ceaseless as rain.
His words broke between us.
“Lingzhao, I wish you had been the one I met first.”