Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Lianqiao came to report that Consort Shu had arrived to pay her respects.

I had been unwell of late and had already excused the Six Palaces from their daily greetings. All I wanted was a little peace and quiet.

Consort Shu alone still came every day to ask whether she could pay her respects. She was probably bored and had nothing better to do.

I sighed and had her shown in. Consort Shu had been with us for many years, having entered the residence back when His Majesty was still Crown Prince. She was now a consort with a palace of her own, yet she remained as blunt and straightforward as ever, with an exceedingly vicious tongue. As a result, she had never gotten along well with the consorts and concubines of the other palaces.

I was about the only person she could still talk to.

No sooner had she finished paying her respects than she began to complain. “Her Imperial Majesty the Empress, I know you’re ill, but you still need to do something. Ever since Concubine Zhen entered the palace, she’s been strutting around like some seductive little vixen. The Emperor has selected her tablet every night for an entire month.”

She wrung the silk handkerchief in her hands and said resentfully, “That vixen has bewitched her sovereign. She ought to be dragged out and given a dozen or so strokes of the rod to teach her a lesson.”

Consort Shu repeated the same complaints in my ear every day. However many days The Emperor selected Concubine Zhen’s tablet, that was how many times Consort Shu came to malign her before me.

She had probably forgotten that when she first entered the Eastern Palace, she too had enjoyed exclusive favor for a time. Emboldened by his favor, she had deliberately arrived late to pay her respects one morning, then covered her lips with a handkerchief and said with a bashful expression, “Please forgive me, Crown Princess. Serving the Crown Prince was simply so exhausting that I accidentally overslept.”

Without even looking up, I ordered her to kneel outside the door for two hours so she might learn some manners and remember the rules. Afterward, she spent quite some time openly defying me.

Later, new women entered the residence, and she gradually fell out of favor. Once, after Li Yi and I finished discussing official matters in the study, I came outside to find her standing in the covered gallery with a bowl of congee, peering in our direction. It was late, and the night air was heavy with dew. Even she no longer knew how long she had been waiting. The hem of her skirt was soaked, yet she seemed not to notice.

I sighed and told her, “The Crown Prince has gone to Zhao Baolin’s quarters. You should hurry back. The wind is cold tonight.”

Her eyes immediately reddened. Consort Shu came from a family of military officers and had never been one for rules, even as a child. After entering the Crown Prince’s residence, she remained careless, loud, and impetuous, but her rare candor was refreshing. On her very first day, she had dared to climb a tree to rescue a tiny kitten that was too frightened to come down. Li Yi happened to see her and found it greatly amusing.

Li Yi spent that very night in her courtyard. As Crown Princess, however, it was still my duty to send an experienced matron to teach her the rules-such as the fact that she could not climb trees. A Liangdi could not spend her days scrambling onto roofs or up trees. What would people say if word got out?

But Consort Shu had assumed I was deliberately making trouble for her. From then on, whenever she saw me, she either spoke in snide insinuations or glared at me with open hostility.

That night was the first time I had ever seen such lost and helpless vulnerability on her face. Utterly dejected, she asked me, “Why did he go to Zhao Baolin? Didn’t he say he would come see me?”

I sighed. Li Yi was not truly a man ruled by lust. Before I married him, he did not have so much as a bedchamber maid. After our marriage, however, there were women bestowed by His Majesty, women granted by the Empress, and concubines formally taken into the residence. Altogether, there were five or six of them-which was hardly many for a Crown Prince.

He was busy with official affairs and could not spend every day in the inner residence. Even when he did visit, he could not favor one woman too heavily over another. He would spend one night here and the next somewhere else. If one of them particularly pleased him, there was nothing unacceptable about favoring her for several nights in a row, so long as he did not take it too far.

I looked at Consort Shu standing there as stiffly as a piece of wood and sighed. In the end, I said nothing to reproach her. Some things had to be experienced before one could see the truth for oneself. No amount of advice from others would help.

Just as it had been for me back then.