Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The Grand Princess treated me exceptionally well. The National Preceptor was originally supposed to come teach me the day after I settled in, but my grandaunt said I had only just recovered from a grave illness and still needed rest, so she sent him back to wait for word.

I had known her status was high, but I had not expected her to take such an attitude with the National Preceptor, a man said to be half a step from ascension. And yet he did not utter a single word of protest.

With the medicine my maternal grandfather prescribed, I recovered quickly. My grandaunt’s beef, and the bowl of donkey-hide gelatin she had me drink every day, deserved no small share of the credit.

She had a separate two-story building cleaned out for me to use as a classroom. The National Preceptor said the Emperor had allowed me to choose what I wished to learn. Classics, history, policy essays, astrology and divination, even the art of governing a nation-as long as I wanted to learn it, he could teach it.

I said I wanted to learn the art of calculating fate. The National Preceptor said that was not permitted; it was not something just anyone could learn. I said in that case, anything would do. As long as it was something he could teach, I was willing to learn.

The National Preceptor did not hold anything back. He taught me what I should learn and what I perhaps should not have. Although I still harbored some feelings toward him, I had to admit that his three hundred years had not been lived in vain. He truly knew a great deal, and he was a fine teacher.

Only, whenever he came to lecture, my grandaunt would always keep far away from this place and never show herself.

I once tried to sound out the National Preceptor and suggested that we hold lessons elsewhere. Without even lifting his eyes from the scroll in his hand, he said mildly, “It is no matter. Since she has allowed me to come, she must have her own considerations. There is no need to worry.”

“You know what my grandaunt is planning to do?”

His eyes lowered slightly. For a long time, he did not blink. Then he slowly shook his head. “…I have never quite understood her.”

The National Preceptor rested two days out of every ten from giving lessons, and on his days off, he would enter the palace to pay his respects to my imperial grandfather. Occasionally, my grandaunt would also take me to the riding grounds and teach me to ride horses and play polo. She said it was only a pity that she had injured her bones; now, even riding a horse was something she could only do for a short stroll, and she could no longer personally teach me her special tricks.

Aside from that, I rarely left the Grand Princess’s estate. My cousins from my maternal grandfather’s family often sent invitations asking me to go out, but I always said the assignments the National Preceptor had left me were abstruse and difficult, and required study.

When the Qixi Festival came, I hid myself in the tower early, avoiding every invitation. As the moon climbed above the treetops, I looked out at the main street from the second-floor window. The laughter and chatter of young men and women scattered on the wind. The streets were packed with people, and lanterns burned as if night would never fall.

Footsteps sounded from the stairway. I turned to look and saw my imperial grandfather in a dark brocade robe, carrying a lantern in his hand. No attendants followed behind him.

I hurried over to support him, then busied myself pulling out a chair and pouring tea. My imperial grandfather held the teacup in his hand but did not drink. He glanced out the window.

“All your cousins went out to play today. Why didn’t you go?”

“The assignments the National Preceptor gave me are profound. Your granddaughter is dull-witted and feared wasting the National Preceptor’s time, so I thought I should spend more effort studying them.”

He smiled helplessly and glanced at the policy essay spread open on my desk. “The National Preceptor said you are incomparably intelligent, better than many people he has met. If we are to speak seriously, what you just said could count as deceiving your sovereign.”

I knelt in silence.

“Jiaojiao.” He called me by that name. I was born on the fifteenth, beneath a full moon bright in the sky, so my parents had given me that childhood name.

“You cannot hide in an attic for the rest of your life.”

I lowered my head even further.

“Your parents’ deaths were not your fault…”

“Father died for the people under heaven. Mother died for the way of a physician. It was not because of me. I understand all of that.”

I lifted my head to look at my imperial grandfather. “I just… want to live a little more easily.”

I simply did not want to feel that kind of pain again.