Chapter 2

Chapter 2

And just like that, at the age of thirteen, through a strange twist of fate, I became the maid in charge of tending the fire and cooking meals for the Wei Family in Shangjing City.

It was lucky the Wei Family had fallen from grace.

Otherwise, when it came to truly precious ingredients, forget cooking and eating them-I was a girl from the countryside. I would not even have seen them before.

I was responsible for three meals a day. Breakfast was easier; it was nothing more than making some buns, thin porridge, and the like.

The troublesome part was the other two meals.

Madam was frail and had been vegetarian for many years. She did not touch meat or fish, and now that she had fallen ill from anger, she had to take a bowl of bird’s nest every day. I did not know how to prepare that, but thankfully, Sister Zhu’er came to make it herself. As for the Eldest Young Master, he was injured and at the very time when he needed nourishment. Even without the steward telling me, I knew to stew some chicken soup and pork ribs for him.

After cooking for the masters, I still had to cook for us servants. The dishes always had to be somewhat different.

I woke very early every day. First, I set the Eldest Young Master’s soup to simmer, then began cooking the porridge. Cooking for such a large household, I was either washing bowls or picking through vegetables, so busy my feet barely touched the ground.

Perhaps because both Madam and the Eldest Young Master were unwell and had poor appetites, I cooked for several days and no one said my food was bad. If the masters did not speak, the steward naturally would not speak either. After three to five days passed and I saw that Steward Uncle Wu had not come to find me, nor did he seem to have any intention of going out to buy another maid, I slowly began to relax.

Cui Jiu was kind. Whenever he had free time, he would come help me chop firewood and draw water.

He was now responsible for sweeping the courtyards and could go everywhere, unlike me, who was confined to one small kitchen.

He had been with the Wei Family for two years already, and he knew far more than I did.

He told me that back when the Wei Family was in its glory, it was truly something else. Every day, important people dressed in gold and silver came and went. Many people begged for a chance to meet the Eldest Young Master. Sometimes, just by leading the way for those people, a servant could receive a casual reward of a handful of gold melon seeds.

The masters of the Wei Family were good people. They never beat or scolded servants lightly, and the monthly wages they gave were quite generous. Anyone who had worked for the Wei Family for a few years, as long as they were a little careful, could save up at least some money like Nanny Zhou. Once they had silver saved, they could go seek shelter with relatives, or return home and open a small shop. Either way, was that not better than being a servant?

When he got to this point, I asked Cui Jiu, “Then why don’t you leave?”

Cui Jiu mumbled, then said vaguely, “Master showed me kindness. Naturally, I can’t leave without repaying it.”

As for what kindness exactly, Cui Jiu did not say.

He changed the subject and continued telling me about the Wei Family’s glorious past.

If one spoke of the Wei Family’s glory, then naturally, one could not avoid mentioning the Eldest Young Master. The Eldest Young Master, Wei Zhao, was handsome and talented, with boundless prospects ahead of him. He had originally had a marriage agreement, arranged with the legitimate daughter of Earl Yongchang’s family.

She was a prospective bride whose family background and appearance were flawless in every respect.

But now, the Eldest Young Master had met with disaster, and his future was ruined. His injuries had not healed, and he could not get out of bed and walk. No one knew whether his legs would ever be able to walk properly again. With the risk that he might be crippled hanging over him, things were no longer what they used to be.

Cui Jiu glanced around, then lowered his voice and said, “I think this marriage might fall through. Earl Yongchang probably isn’t willing to marry his legitimate young lady over anymore.”

Hearing gossip about the Eldest Young Master behind his back made me nervous. I could not help lowering my voice along with him and asked like a thief, “Can they really break off the engagement?”

If the engagement was broken off, then she indeed would not have to marry the Eldest Young Master.

But in that case, how ugly would the reputation of Earl Yongchang Manor become? Their precious legitimate daughter, as noble as gold and jade, would have had an engagement broken. In the future, people would inevitably gossip about her.

Cui Jiu seemed to understand the methods of these great aristocratic families very well. I only heard him say mysteriously, “Unless there’s absolutely no other choice, they won’t break off the engagement. After all, rumors can be terrifying. Think about it. There may only be one or two legitimate daughters, but Earl Yongchang Manor has plenty of concubine-born daughters. Giving one of them to the Eldest Young Master would be no great loss.”

I sucked in a cold breath. “A substitute bride?”

Cui Jiu did not speak. He raised his index finger and carefully shushed me.

So I did not dare say anything more.

I only thought silently to myself: everyone said the Eldest Young Master was immensely talented and had become famous at a young age. Now that he had fallen on hard times, if Earl Yongchang Manor truly meant to switch in a concubine-born daughter, then to the Eldest Young Master, that would probably be an even greater humiliation than breaking off the engagement.

Most likely because I had spent too long chatting with Cui Jiu during the day about men and women, marriage and weddings, that night, in a daze, I dreamed of Brother Qiusheng.

Eighty li from Shangjing, there was a place called Qingshi Town.

In Qingshi Town, there was a Baiyun Village.

My family was one small household in that Baiyun Village.

My father farmed, and my mother set up a little stall at the village entrance selling sliced noodles.

From the time I was old enough to understand anything, I helped Mother at the stall.

At first, life was passable. Then my mother died.

Father soon remarried. My stepmother bore him two younger brothers and a younger sister, and with Father alone, two mu of dry field, and so many mouths to feed, from then on, he had no attention to spare for me.

Their original plan was to marry me off early. If I could become a concubine in Squire Wang’s household after he returned to the village to live out his old age, that would be best.

Squire Wang was old, and he liked young girls best. His manor was full of concubines, all only thirteen or fourteen years old.

Father and my stepmother planned to wait until my first monthly bleeding, then find a way to let me show my face before Squire Wang. If Squire Wang took a liking to me, that would be ideal. If he did not, they would think of something else.

As for me, I did not like that old grandfather Squire Wang.

He was even older than my father.

If I had to marry, I wanted to marry Brother Qiusheng, who had grown up with me.

Brother Qiusheng’s mother sold cooling tea. Her stall was set up beside my mother’s. His father had died early, and his mother had raised him all on her own. Brother Qiusheng had asthma. He was not rowdy like my younger brothers, nor rough and boorish like the men his age. He was a very quiet person.

My stepmother had always looked down on him, secretly despising him for being timid.

To her face, I did not dare argue. But in private, I always felt that in this world, if there were bold people, there had to be timid people too. So what if he was timid? He sat there quietly. If you told him to eat, he ate; if you told him to drink water, he drank water. In the future, surely he would not be like the men in the village, who beat their wives after drinking wine. Marrying him would be something I could feel safe about.

Brother Qiusheng did not sell cooling tea. He learned a craft from the old men in the village and planned to become a carpenter. I had seen the tables and chairs he made. They were flat and smooth, without a single splinter.

Back then, when I dreamed at night, I dreamed of Brother Qiusheng too.

I dreamed that he became the most famous carpenter for a hundred li around, carrying two wild geese as betrothal gifts as he came to my house in grand fashion to propose marriage.

In the dream, I prayed that Father and my stepmother would see how Brother Qiusheng had made something of himself and marry me to him, instead of sending me to Squire Wang’s household to be some wretched concubine.

Thinking back later, I truly had been imagining too much.

Whether it was Squire Wang or Brother Qiusheng, both would have counted as good roads. How could there have been any room for me to pick and choose?

What I met was a third road, one no woman in this world ever wants to encounter.

My youngest brother ate something bad and came down with dysentery.

The illness struck fiercely. In just a few days, he had withered away.

Yet at that very moment, Father went out at night to fetch the doctor. The mountain road was wet and slippery, and Father broke his leg in a fall.

In this household, my youngest brother had to be saved. And without Father, we could not survive either.

Saving lives urgently required money.

Where would the money come from?

On the day I left in tears with the human trafficker, I saw Brother Qiusheng. He was sitting in front of his house, shaving down a length of bamboo.

He lifted his head and met my eyes, then hurriedly looked away in a panic.

That was the last time I ever saw him.

Tonight, in this dream, I dreamed of him again after so long.

He was still shaving bamboo, not daring to look at me even once.

In the vast sea of people, after parting, who knew when we might meet again? At that final glance, he did not dare look at me.

What would have happened if he had looked at me? I would not have begged him to spend every coin his family had to buy me. I only wanted to say a proper goodbye to him.

My stepmother was right. He was timid.

Far too timid.

When I woke from the dream, I reached under my pillow and pulled out a hard steamed bun I had been unable to bring myself to eat.

This was Shangjing City, the Wei Family.

I had signed a contract selling myself. I was a servant of the Wei Family.

I supposed Qiusheng of Baiyun Village and I had no fate together in this lifetime.