Chapter 10

Chapter 10

In early June, I set out for Tanzhou.

Prince Duan’s Mansion kept an incense altar, watched over year-round. I had written ahead and asked them to have my little courtyard cleaned up.

Through the haze of memory, everything was still as it had been in my childhood.

The bed in my chamber was made of huanghuali wood. It had cost a fortune back then, and even now it remained free of rot and worms, as perfect as the day it was bought.

Lying on that bed, I dreamed of my childhood for the first time in a very long while. It felt so real that I could no longer tell which side was the dream.

I sat before my parents’ graves for an entire day. I had brought fine wine from the capital, the kind they had loved when they were alive. One jar I poured over the thick earth; the other burned its way down my throat, so fierce that two tears slipped straight down my face.

Before my departure, someone from the Imperial Observatory came to inform me that Tanzhou would soon be hit by a heavy rain. They told me to return as early as possible, lest I be trapped by the downpour and unable to go back to the capital.

On the day I was to leave, the prefect came to see me off. He said he had been too busy these past few days to find time to meet me. I told him it had not been anything important, and that of course he should put official matters first.

The prefect was still the same man from back then, diligently helping me govern the place all these years. After we spoke for a while and my luggage had been packed, I was just about to turn and board the carriage when a minor clerk came galloping over on horseback, shouting that there was an urgent report.

“My lord! Last night’s heavy rain made the river surge. The Yangsong River dike has collapsed, and villages and towns have already been swept away by the flood!”

The prefect’s eyes rolled back, and he toppled where he stood. I was the one who caught him. The servant beside him took him from me and anxiously pinched the philtrum beneath his nose.

I glanced at the urgent report in the clerk’s hand, then had my maid bring out brush, ink, paper, and inkstone. Using the front compartment of the carriage as a desk, I began writing a letter, instructing the clerk as I wrote, “Once I finish, take my personal letter and send it to the capital by eight-hundred-li express. I am not familiar with the affairs of the prefectural office, so the prefect will remain here to hold down the fort.”

The prefect slowly came around and asked weakly, “…If I remain here, Your Highness, what about you?”

“Send men at once to purchase grain, flour, and medicinal herbs, and have them delivered to the prefectural office within the hour. Assign half of your elite guards to me. I will leave immediately.”

I took out most of the silver I had on me. “If anyone wants to profit from the people’s suffering, use your official authority to pressure them. If they refuse to comply, throw them in jail for a few days. If anyone above blames you, I will take responsibility.”

The clerk took my letter and left. The prefect was helped back to the prefectural office to arrange the manpower.

I sat in the carriage and thought for a moment, then took down my hair and coiled it at the back of my head. I changed into the coarse cloth clothes I had bought and wrapped several strips of cloth around my hands.

Once the supplies were accounted for, I pulled a bamboo hat over my head and led some thirty men on horseback out of the city, straight toward the disaster area.

After riding hard through the night, we reached Qiyun Town at daybreak. Dark clouds pressed down overhead, swollen with water no one knew when they would finish emptying; it was hard to tell day from night.

This place had suffered the worst. The floodwater in the town and villages rose to the waist, and half the houses had been washed down.

I found the first person I came across after entering the village, showed him the token from the prefectural office, and told him to summon whoever was in charge now. I said Tanzhou Prefecture had sent people.

The man who came was the local village head, a middle-aged man in his forties. His legs were caked in mud and sand until they looked like two yams, and even his words were trembling with apprehension. “May I ask how I should address you, my lord?”

“My surname is Lin.” That was my mother’s surname. I turned and pointed toward the slope. “Prefect Zhu of Tanzhou Prefecture sent me with some grain, medicine, and the like, as well as burlap sacks for sand.”

The village head hesitated. “I have never heard of a female official surnamed Lin in Tanzhou Prefecture.”

I smiled calmly. “I came from the capital and happened to run into this.”

The village head immediately became respectful. He called for people to receive the delivered supplies, then led me through the waist-deep water into town. “Most of the people have almost all left. We still need to pile up more sandbags. Saving even one household is still saving a household.”

I was not familiar with the area and could not help much with relocating the residents, so I joined them in filling sandbags. After riding all night and swinging a shovel for the entire morning, the cloth wrapped around my palms had already been worn through two layers.

The wind grew stronger. We could not stay any longer, so I followed the villagers up the mountain. When we reached the village entrance, I looked back. Beneath the black mass of the sky, the waves whipped up by the gale rose higher than the houses.

One wave came crashing down, and a house became-countless shattered pieces, silently swallowed by the water.

Perhaps there had been sound. But amid the flashes of lightning, the rolling thunder, and the howling wind and rain, it could no longer reach human ears.

The auntie walking with me patted my shoulder and told me to hurry.

I held my bamboo hat in place and followed her, feeling the rain stream down my straw rain cape, pressing so heavily on my shoulders that they felt weighed down with stone.