Chapter 3
The Hundred Arts Troupe was based in Xicheng, several hundred li from the capital. It had begun as a handful of people performing acrobatics.
Ten years earlier, the troupe master had married a fallen daughter of a distinguished family. After that, the troupe had gradually prospered.
I was the exception: a girl admitted as an apprentice.
Perhaps growing up in Rouge House had taught me something. I had more talent than any of my fellow apprentices.
Tightrope walking, juggling, leaping among swords and dancing—I needed to be shown only once.
The master thought he had found a treasure and became all the more willing to teach me.
When the others complained that he favored me too much, he dismissed them. “If you were as beautiful and gifted as Feng Xuan, I’d cherish you just as much.”
Gradually, however, the way he looked at me changed. A teacher’s admiration became a man’s appraisal of a woman.
At dinner, ignoring his wife’s sudden change of expression, he smiled and put a piece of fatty meat in my bowl. “Xuan is a grown girl now. She needs more meat to fill out into a proper woman!”
I was no longer a foolish, innocent child. How could I fail to hear the lechery in his words?
By day, I could fend off his filthy remarks. At night, I kept a brick I had picked up beneath my pillow.
My restraint only made him bolder.
After a family dinner, he slipped behind the stage and tried to tug at my clothes when my guard was down.
He grinned obscenely. “My wife is old and faded, and so dull. She isn’t worth one finger of yours. Why not let me keep you as my mistress? Fine food every day—isn’t that better than performing outside?”
I kept backing away, but he refused to give up. “So what if you’re registered as a free woman? Since when has a woman who shows herself in public come to a good end? If I tell people you’re loose, where will you find a place after leaving this troupe?”
To keep him at bay, I forced a few smiles. “But I’m still your apprentice. If I agreed, it would damage your reputation as well. Give me a little time to think. I’ll meet you at the stable at midnight with my answer.”
His eyes lit up. He pinched my cheek hard. “Just what I’d expect from brothel goods. You certainly know how to charm a man! We’ll do as you say!”
That night, I ground up the nine-leaf herb I had gathered on the mountain and mixed it into the feed in the back stable.
Madam Lin had used that drug on disobedient women in Rouge House, forcing them to swallow it to break their spirits.
Sure enough, the horses grew restless after eating.
When the master approached in the dark, I crept behind him and gave him a hard shove.
Caught unawares, he fell into the stable, where the frightened horses trampled him several times.
By the time his wife came running at the noise, I had dragged him out. He clutched his chest, howling.
His eyes looked ready to devour me alive. “Bitch! You dared hurt me! I’ll kill you!”
His wife had, after all, grown up in a great household.
She soon pieced together what had happened. Her face darkened as she ordered a worker to fetch a physician. “An old man who won’t behave deserves what he gets!”
In the main room, I knelt fearfully at her feet. “Forgive me, madam. I truly had no other choice. I didn’t mean to kill the master. I’ll accept whatever punishment you give me.”
I had thought that, gentle and reasonable as she always was, she would understand another woman with no power over her own fate.
Instead, her first words were an order to leave.
“I didn’t want my husband taking female apprentices because I knew his nature would never change. Now you’ve openly turned against each other. Staying here will only bring more trouble.”
I looked up in disbelief. She was calmly stirring her tea. “I’m a woman too. I know how disgraceful my husband is. But when my family fell, without his help, my fate would have been no better than yours.
“A husband and wife rise and fall together. For the sake of the dozens of people whose livelihood depends on this troupe, you must be the one to suffer.”
She tossed a purse of silver in front of me. “The troupe has wronged you today. Your father paid us to take you in. Consider this compensation.”
My cleverness had cost me the shelter I had lived in for five years.
I did not hate her coldness. I blamed a world that was so cruel to women.
Men visiting brothels was considered only natural. A woman who showed the slightest defiance was condemned for stepping outside her place.
Choking back tears, I bowed goodbye. In the end, I took only the tools with which I earned my living.
Lady Song had said, “An honorable man values money, but earns it honestly.”
I was no honorable man, but I knew better than to forget those who had helped me.
Taking the silver would give them something to hold over me.
However destitute I became, I would never trade my dignity for money.