Chapter 8
When I appeared at Gong Lang’s shabby, secluded home, looking a complete wreck, he stared for a moment before offering me his best stool.
As soon as he recovered, he brought out the purchasing list.
“Mistress Jiang, here’s the list, and here are the contracts. Word from the herb merchants is that prices are already ten times what they were. We’re only waiting for your decision. Tell me when to sell, and I’ll leave at once.”
I took a handkerchief and wiped my face.
“I’ll go myself.”
As planned, the herbs had supposedly been shipped away. In fact, they were stockpiled in a small northern city, the only city I remembered escaping invasion in my last life.
Gong Lang stared. “But… but…”
I patted his shoulder. “I’m a year older than you, so I’ll call you my younger brother. Fortune favors those willing to take risks. We bought these herbs cheaply. If we can sell them, we’ll both turn our fortunes around. Fathers and sons fight side by side; brothers face tigers together. How could I send you into danger alone?”
“Then… when do we leave?”
“At dawn.”
Wind and rain battered the house. Half of Gong Lang’s roof leaked.
After I changed and tied up my hair, he was still rushing about with cracked jars to catch the water.
Suddenly, I remembered that Widow Liu’s roof leaked too.
She had seemed to catch a chill a couple of days earlier. Mother and Old Sun had even gloated over it.
I asked whether Gong Lang had any silver left.
He slid aside a piece of wood in the wall to reveal a hidden compartment full of loose copper coins.
Before leaving the city, I climbed over Widow Liu’s wall and left a bag of coins wrapped in a handkerchief beneath her windowsill.
I could hear her coughing inside.
I had barely set it down when a voice called, “Who’s there?”
I had to answer softly, “It’s me.”
She opened the door, saw my clothes, and understood at once.
She nodded, approval filling her eyes. “You should have left long ago. Are you going to find your fiancé?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t even rely on my own mother. How much less could I depend on a boy I had known in childhood?
“I’m going to try my hand at trade.”
Widow Liu coughed twice more. “Wait here.”
She went inside and drew a small box from beneath the bedboard under her pillow.
From it, she took two pieces of silver, saying they were for my journey.
When I refused, she told me to treat it as an investment.
She glanced back at her two peacefully sleeping children. “If it weren’t for those two little ones, I’d go with you. Miss Miao, you’re a good girl with a head on your shoulders. Your mother can’t see the treasure she has. She’d trade you away for a few days’ food. But I know you’ll make something of yourself. I have no particular skills, only my strength. Don’t turn up your nose at this little bit of money. You can scrimp at home, but not on the road. It’s harder still out there for a woman alone.”
Yet she was a woman too, raising two children. She washed so many clothes that her fingernails were coming loose.
This money had cost her blood and sweat.
In the end, I refused it.