Chapter 3
The wine was warm when the door opened.
Pei Guannan stood in the doorway, still in his ceremonial robes.
He smiled as though nothing had happened.
“Where’s the wine?”
I set down the pot. “It’s warm.”
“Your Majesty should change first.”
He ignored me.
Striding over, he took my wrist.
“I’ll change after a drink.”
He reached for the wine pot, his other hand still locked around me.
I let him have his way and poured him half a cup.
He drained it in one swallow and frowned.
“Your wine is still so astringent.”
He was in low spirits.
He pushed the cup back into my hand and finally released me to undo his ceremonial robes.
I hung them over the screen.
When I turned back, he was already sitting at the edge of the bed, holding out a hand to me.
As always, he had left the lamp burning.
He was afraid of the dark.
The nights at the mountain temple had been long. He needed a lamp alight before he could sleep.
Even after returning to the palace, he had never lost the habit.
The brocade bedding was crumpled beneath us.
His voice drifted down from above my head.
“Yuanzhen, you won’t leave me, will you?”
He had asked that question countless times.
Every day he asked, and every day I answered.
“Xie Yuanzhen will always stay beside Your Highness.”
A muffled sound escaped my lips.
This time, I did not answer.
When no reply came, he suddenly stopped.
He asked again.
I opened my eyes and silently drew away, gathering my clothes about me one piece at a time.
“Your Majesty ought to have a child.”
A soft laugh came from behind me. “Xie Yuanzhen.”
“I am here.”
“Turn around.”
“Look me in the eyes and say that again.”
I drew a breath and turned, feigning composure.
“Your Majesty is the emperor. Great Fu needs an heir if the realm is to be secure.”
“I am a man with no place in the inner palace. I cannot stay beside Your Majesty forever.”
He stared straight at me.
“Xie Yuanzhen, do you want me to have a child?”
“Or do you want to leave me?”
I could not answer. Instinctively, I wanted to escape.
He caught my arm. “You want me to select consorts, to continue the imperial line.”
“Do you think I’m disgusting too?”
Before I could answer, he bent to pick up his outer robe from the floor and put it on.
Cold wind rushed in.
For the first time in four years, he left me alone in the side hall.
Snow covered the steps. Half a pot of wine remained.
I poured a cup, drank it slowly, and lay down.
The Xies were a great clan. On the day I was chosen as the crown prince’s study companion,
my father was so delighted that he drank three cups in succession.
“You have always been steady, while the crown prince is restless. To complement one another is part of your duty.”
The first time we met, he was crouching beside a flower bed in the Eastern Palace, teasing a cricket.
His sleeves were rolled to his elbows. There was mud on his face.
“You’re from the Xie family?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know how to fight crickets?”
“…No.”
“Oh,” he said, lowering his head to keep poking with his grass stem.
He was no poor student. He simply could not sit still.
While the Grand Tutor lectured, he could spin his brush through elaborate tricks.
Once, he angered the Grand Tutor and was ordered to copy the Book of Rites fifty times.
At midnight, he pushed a stack of paper in front of me. “Your handwriting’s good. Copy thirty for me.”
I went on copying for him for eight years.
The late emperor favored Prince Xian.
When the crown prince was framed, the Eastern Palace’s former retainers were the quickest to flee.
I gave up my scholarly rank, packed a couple of changes of clothing, and followed him to Yun’an Temple.
I had studied the sages since childhood, all their talk of ordering the family, governing the state, and bringing peace to the world.
For three years in the mountain temple, there was only chopping wood and tending fires.
And listening on rainy nights as he clung to me and asked again and again, “Will you leave?”
All those ambitions were crushed beneath the dark current of desire and love.
The Xie family thought me filthy. The upright scholars sneered at me as a sycophant.
No one at court remembered that I too had once studied the sages and dreamed of serving the world.