chapter 2
chapter 2
I rose early the next morning.
Xiaoli was deft with her hands. She swept all my hair into an elegant coiled style and adorned it with a complete set of white jade ornaments, dignified yet unmistakably opulent.
I told Shen Yunfeng to cut his arm and drip a little blood on the bridal cloth so that we would have something to present. His ears reddened, but he complied.
Madam Shen beamed when she saw us arrive together and the cloth the matron presented. Before I could finish kneeling, she hurriedly ordered a servant to help me up.
Shen Yunfeng started to rise as well. Her expression changed at once.
“I told my daughter-in-law to rise. You, unfilial wretch, will remain on your knees!”
He dropped back down with a thump and lowered his head in silence.
Madam Shen smilingly drew me to sit beside her. “My dear, I always knew you were a good girl. Let all that came before die with yesterday. From now on, you are mistress of this household.
“If anyone without eyes dares provoke you, come tell me. Do not injure your health by losing your temper.”
Her words were artful. They upheld my dignity as principal wife while quietly protecting Meng Lan. If Meng Lan did wrong, I was not to punish her privately; the old madam would handle it herself.
I nodded obediently. “Mother always said you were generous and kind and that I would never be mistreated after marrying here. Now that I have met you, I see she was right. Your daughter-in-law’s heart is finally at ease.”
Madam Shen and I reached an understanding without ever stating it openly. Pleased with my performance, she gave me two heavy red envelopes.
“The other is on behalf of your father-in-law.”
At the mention of the late General Shen, sadness touched her face. She had been his second wife. His first wife had died in childbirth, and none of his other women had borne him a child.
At last, after consulting a fortune-teller about their birth charts, he had married the present Madam Shen, who gave birth to Shen Yunfeng.
She dabbed at the corners of her eyes, then pointed at her son. “Wretch! If you mistreat Zhen’er, do not bother coming to see me again. Do you hear?”
Head bowed, Shen Yunfeng murmured his assent.
My painstaking explanation the night before appeared to have borne some fruit.
The instant we left Madam Shen, impatience showed on his face. I teased him. “In a hurry to see your beautiful darling?”
His ears turned scarlet.
“Go. Just remember to bring her to see me after noon.”
By custom, Meng Lan should have paid her respects after breakfast. By asking them to come later, I was telling him he could spend a little longer with her.
He thanked me and hurried away.
It was past noon when Meng Lan finally came.
I had first seen her at Qiongyu Pavilion, where Shen Yunfeng was helping her buy jewelry. Back then, a trace of humility and timidity had remained in her eyes.
Wealth nourished the complexion. In a single year, she seemed transformed. Her tall, slender figure had filled out; her skin glowed fair and rosy, like a ripened peach. Everything she wore, from the ornaments in her hair to the clothes on her body, was worth a fortune.
Love could raise a woman like a flower. Shen Yunfeng must have loved her dearly.
She entered with her chin high and a proud expression, plainly prepared to contend with me.
“Peace and health to you, Madam.”
By the rules, a concubine meeting the principal wife had to kneel and kowtow. She merely dipped her knees.
I kept my expression gentle. “Sit, Sister. We are family now. There is no need for empty ceremony.”
My words alluded to her discourtesy. Whether she understood, I could not tell.
Shen Yunfeng nodded. “Zhen’er is right. These are empty formalities. You need not bow in future.”
He meant to speak for Meng Lan, but somehow touched a raw nerve.
She flung off his hand. “So she is right and I am wrong? You call her so affectionately—who knows what the two of you did last night?”
Lifting her chin, she stared straight at me.
“Cui Qizhen, we are both women. Do not imagine I cannot see what you are planning. I may be a concubine now, but that does not mean I will remain one all my life. Just wait and see.”
She swept away, stiff-backed and defiant. Shen Yunfeng gave me an embarrassed smile, then rushed after her without time to explain.
Beside me, Xiaoli fumed. “That woman has no sense of propriety at all.”
I lifted my teacup and took a sip. “She is only quick-tempered. That does not make her wicked.”
Xiaoli sighed regretfully. “The Cui family is so distinguished. Why did you have to marry into a declining house like this?”
I skimmed the leaves from my tea and did not answer.
The lady of a household was supposed to manage its affairs and bear its children. I had no objection to the first. The second, I refused.
Even amid the luxury of Chang’an’s great families, childbirth remained a passage through the gates of death. If fortune permitted mother and child to survive, no one knew whether the child would live past ten.
I had watched my elder sister die before my eyes.
Her round belly had been veined blue and taut while the midwives worked between her legs. Basin after basin of bloody water was carried out. She screamed until she lost control of her body, stripped of dignity like a broken rag doll.
At last she no longer had strength even to cry out. With her breath fading, she gripped my hand and forced her eyes open.
Her voice was as faint as a feather.
“Zhen’er, it hurts so much.”
A living woman vanished in an instant. My sister and her unborn child both died.
Only three months later, her husband took another wife. The concubines in his rear courtyard lined up one after another, waiting to bear his children.
No one remembered my sister.
Her name was Cui Qining.
Many women in Chang’an had shared her fate. Qin Afeng died in childbirth a year after her wedding. Li Caiwei was cut open to save her child, and both mother and infant perished.
There were countless others.
I refused to become one of them—to offer my living, breathing self to some unknown lump of flesh.
But I dared not say so. My parents adored me and denied me nothing, yet I could never let anyone discover such a rebellious thought.
So I chose with great care and finally settled on the Shen family.
It was the best bargain I could make for my own life.