Chapter 1

Chapter 1

My father was the Earl of Chengyi, but he was nothing more than a useless, pleasure-seeking wastrel drawing a nobleman’s pay.

The most successful thing he ever did in his life was father children.

Over the years, he took twenty-one concubines and sired fourteen daughters. When he tried to keep going, he suffered a stroke in bed, leaving his mouth crooked and one eye askew. Only then did he finally stop.

My father’s legal wife was a ruthless woman. When Father wanted concubines, she helped arrange them. When those concubines became pregnant, she sent medicine and warm clothing. But once the children were born, whether they lived or died was entirely up to her.

If the child was a boy, he was drowned without exception. If it was a girl, she was allowed to live.

In a way, we seemed precious too. She would not let us do rough work, saying a woman’s hands must not grow coarse. But she also would not let us eat too much, saying women should not be fat.

The thirteen of us, all daughters born of concubines, were like rabbits in her pen: obedient, timid, weak, and afraid of trouble.

Once we reached fifteen or sixteen, we would either be married off to merchants in exchange for exorbitant bride prices, or sent away as favored concubines to powerful men to buy prospects for our elder brother.

Once married, we were gone. If we lived well, we had a natal family to rely on. If we did not, then life and death were up to fate.

I thought I would be married to a rich merchant. My concubine mother said that would not be so bad; at least I would be the principal wife.

Never did I imagine that on the night of my coming-of-age ceremony, my brother-in-law, three parts drunk, would force his way into my room.

I smashed a teacup against his forehead, but I could not escape my legitimate elder sister’s words: “I will sell your mother to a brothel this instant.”

And so I was carried like livestock to the Marquis of Changping’s Mansion.

My legitimate elder sister had been married for ten years without a child. She wanted a son.

Among the remaining daughters of concubines in her natal family, she chose me.

She said my waist was slim and my hips were wide, so I was sure to bear a son. In truth, I knew she chose me because I was timid and afraid of trouble.

My concubine mother said this was the fate of a concubine-born daughter.

From the moment we were born, our lives were never our own.

A month later, they discovered I was pregnant. My legitimate elder sister had someone examine my belly and declared it was certainly a boy.

After that, delicacies of every kind were sent to my room in a constant stream.

I thought, this child was a debt of sin. The best fate for him would be never to come into this world at all.

I poured all the food they sent me into the bamboo grove in the back courtyard. Sometimes it was two steamed buns. Sometimes half a chicken.

The old maidservant assigned to attend me discovered it and stamped her foot, saying, “If you throw your food into the bamboo grove, won’t that just benefit that little bastard?”

What bastard? I did not care about the affairs of the Marquis’s Mansion. In any case, I would not eat those delicacies.

But seven months later, I still gave birth to a boy.

My legitimate elder sister held the child in her arms and looked coldly at me.

“Young Master Guan has a noble status. If you live, you will only bring shame upon him.”

She had four old women gag me, then drag me to the Bamboo Garden and bury me in a pit that had been dug long ago.

I knew the spot of the pit very well, because every day, I had placed my meals there.

When the last handful of earth covered my face, I wondered: what was the point of someone like me coming into this world?

But then someone dug me out again.

That child was as thin as a new bamboo shoot, as if a gust of wind could snap him in two. Yet he carried me on his back for ten li by sheer force of will.

He did not say a word along the way. Before he left, he took off the only long robe he owned and gave it to me.

In the depths of winter, with his frail shoulders bare to the cold, he said to me in a young, tender voice,

“Live.”

As he left, I pressed the gold ring my concubine mother had given me into his palm.