Chapter 3
Zheng Xi was dead.
Someone had seen Chuntang order the servant boys to drag her out of the house at night. Not until the next morning did Chuntang return alone, distraught.
Under questioning, she confessed in fear. She hadn’t laid a hand on the girl, she said. The servants had been tempted by her looks and tried to assault her. In the struggle, Zheng Xi had accidentally pulled them into the water with her.
Master Zheng was furious. He whipped Chuntang half to death and immediately sent everyone in the household to search along the river.
Only three days later were the bodies found, floating by an embankment downstream.
Five corpses, bloated in the river.
The coroner went to examine them. At the sight of flesh loosened by feeding fish, he hastily covered his nose and shook his head.
The girl’s corpse was indeed the same size as Zheng Xi, but when the Zheng servants were asked to identify her, not one dared speak.
There was nothing to be done. The girl had been mad since construction began on the house.
According to the older servants, at five she had seen her mother elope with another man. Shock had brought on a fever that damaged her mind.
Master Zheng, kindhearted as a bodhisattva, had kept her in the back courtyard all these years. But the ungrateful girl never tried to please her mistress. She rolled on the ground and ate mud all day, scarcely looking human.
These last two years in particular, her madness had worsened. She stank so badly that anyone coming near had to cover their nose. Who could remember what she looked like?
Fortunately, the old steward spotted a distinguishing mark: the corpse had no fingers on either hand.
The scars varied in age, but the cuts were all neat, as though someone had deliberately sliced each finger off with a sharp blade.
The steward hurried home to report.
For three days Master Zheng had been too anxious to eat or drink. The news struck him like a thunderbolt. He shouted that no one was to touch his daughter’s body; he would go to the embankment himself to bring her home.
The sedan bearers ran so fast that the curtained chair nearly shook apart.
Yet at the sight of the rotten corpse, Zheng Qingxu went mad. He dropped to his knees and pulled his daughter’s bones straight out!
“Impossible… Impossible! This isn’t Zheng Xi!”
The coroner and the clerk responsible for judicial affairs watched in horror as he picked up a stone and smashed those human bones, one by one, holding the broken ends before his eyes to inspect them.
“This isn’t my daughter! You switched her! Did you black-hearted thieves take her away?”
Master Zheng raved, seizing the coroner by the collar and roaring, until several terrified constables held him back.
The servants hurriedly forced him home and made him drink a pot of medicine to soothe his mind.
Before long, Prefect Li Deqing arrived on hearing the news. Alone with Master Zheng in the study, he flew into a great rage.
As soon as the ashen-faced prefect left, Master Zheng’s anger overwhelmed him. Convulsing, he spat a mouthful of blood and fell backward, unconscious.
The household descended into chaos.
I lay facedown on a prayer cushion in the Buddhist shrine, listening as Cuizhu, a little maid from the mistress’s rooms, recounted the whole affair with abundant embellishment.
“Ow. That hurts.” I bared my teeth and hissed through them.
“The medicine does sting a little. Bear with it, sister.” Cuizhu gently finished binding my wounds, looking worried. “Now that the master, our pillar of support, has fallen ill, the mistress is fretting all day too. I don’t know what will become of us.”
As she spoke, the old steward hurried into the courtyard with several men.
“Chuntang, the master wishes to question you. Make yourself ready and come with me.”