Chapter 5
Chapter 5
Lu Qingshuang’s face went pale.
But she straightened her back and shouted, “If Your Highness wants the jade, you could have just said so. At worst, on my cousin’s account, I’ll let you have it.”
“You’re husband and wife. To start drawing lines between yours and mine over such a worthless trinket-aren’t you afraid people will laugh at how petty Your Highness is if word gets out?”
I ignored her.
My gaze went straight to Pei Pingjin.
“Banknotes or silver ingots? Will you pay today, or send it to the Princess’s Residence tomorrow? Say something.”
In an instant, all color drained from Pei Pingjin’s face.
Hoarsely, he asked, “How could it be His Majesty’s?”
I glanced at Lu Qingshuang, who had shrunk back and no longer dared make a sound, then pointed at the jade ornaments hanging all over her and gave a cold laugh.
“So if it had been mine, she could take it without asking and smash it into these ugly things?”
As soon as I finished speaking, the pastry chef I had invited to the capital rushed before me upon hearing the commotion.
Ignoring everyone trying to stop him, he dropped to his knees before me with a thud and cried for help.
His forehead struck the bluestone tiles until it bled. Holding out a pair of fingers he could no longer fully straighten, he sobbed, “Your Highness, please save me!”
As it turned out, the pastry chef who had been snatched into the Marquis’s Estate out of spite had been living in utter misery.
In order to show off her kindness and magnanimity before others, Lu Qingshuang forced him to make pastries day and night.
Those pastries were wrapped in oiled paper and given away everywhere by Lu Qingshuang as tokens of benevolence.
The maids in the courtyard, the gatekeepers, the peddlers by the road, and the beggars in the alleys-everyone could receive the Marquis’s Estate’s young lady’s charity.
She was such an honest, straightforward person. She simply wanted all the lowly people in the capital to taste pastries that only their betters could eat.
Because those people received a single pastry they might never have seen in their entire lives otherwise, they called her a living bodhisattva.
In private, they praised her as innocent and kind, saying that if she became the heir’s wife, she would truly be a blessing to the Marquis’s Estate.
But the pastry chef suffered bitterly for it. Because his fee was high, he was not allowed any assistants.
He was shut in the kitchen in the rear courtyard, making pastries day and night.
If he was slow, if anything went wrong, if he was accused of slacking, he would be scolded.
Even when he was so exhausted he could hardly endure the days and nights and merely closed his eyes for a short rest, Lu Qingshuang would lash him awake with a whip, crane her neck, and curse him for taking money without doing his job, threatening to have him turned over to the authorities.
Common folk did not fight officials. The pastry chef endured until life was unbearable.
He endured until his eyes grew clouded, until he was reduced to skin and bones, until his hands became deformed and he could not even hold chopsticks.
Even after being accused to her face by the pastry chef, Lu Qingshuang still did not think herself in the wrong. She stuck out her neck and shouted, “We paid to invite you into the estate to make pastries. That was your job! What right do you have to bargain?”
I looked calmly at the pastry chef and asked, “When I first invited you to the capital, I promised you one thousand taels a day. That is a common price in the capital. Miss Lu said the highest bidder wins. Since she is so righteous about it, I suppose the wages she offered must have been extraordinarily high.”
With a thud, the pastry chef knocked his forehead to the ground.
“The Marquis’s Estate has not paid this humble man a single coin!”
At those words, the whole courtyard burst into an uproar.
The noble houses of the capital loved prestige and one-upping one another.
But their confidence and arrogance were piled up with real streams of silver.
A house like the Marquis’s Estate-one that wanted the dignity of nobility without spending any money-could not be found a second time in all the capital.
Put nicely, they owed wages.
Put bluntly, they had imprisoned and enslaved a commoner.
The contemptuous gazes of the crowd were like knives, piercing layer after layer of the Marquis’s Estate’s dignity until it was riddled with holes.
Lu Qingshuang, now the target of everyone’s condemnation, froze where she stood. Like a chicken with its neck seized, she could no longer put on her earlier swagger.
One thousand taels a day. The pastry chef had stayed at the Marquis’s Estate for a full forty-one days.
That was forty-one thousand taels.
Add to that the thirty thousand taels for the jade.
More than seventy thousand taels of silver. Even if the Marquis’s Estate, an empty shell, were hollowed out, it could not produce that sum.
That was the price to be paid for a young girl’s courage, righteousness, and recklessness.
Pei Pingjin was afraid.
He could not afford the money, nor could he bear the Son of Heaven’s wrath and the crime of being condemned by all.
So he said to me, “Your Highness, Qingshuang is still young. It was my failure to discipline her. I promise I will teach her properly from now on.”
“Now that Your Highness has vented enough anger, please stop clinging to this and refusing to let her go!”
I abruptly laughed aloud.
“The ones who owe money are you, Pei Pingjin, and the Marquis’s Estate. Naturally, I will cling to you and refuse to let you go!”
As Pei Pingjin gritted his teeth hard enough to crack them, I rose to my feet.
“Can’t pay? No matter. The Empress Dowager once stood surety for your Marquis’s Estate. This money-she will pay it!”
Lu Qingshuang, who had just tried to use the Empress Dowager to pressure me, heard that I intended to make the Empress Dowager pay to clean up the mess left by her childish recklessness.
At once, her legs went weak, and she nearly collapsed to the ground.
The Empress Dowager stood above all but one; she was not the sort to default on a debt.
After I beat the drums and gongs all the way to her door to demand payment, she gnashed her teeth and had someone send over eighty thousand taels of silver. In front of everyone, she declared there was no need to give change.
She meant to mock me for recognizing money rather than people, for having eyes only for silver.
Since she was so generous, I could not be petty either.
I immediately used the remaining nine thousand taels to set up a porridge station, distributing porridge to refugees in the name of the Empress Dowager’s benevolence and righteousness.