Chapter 3
After that interruption, the gathering lost its liveliness and soon broke up.
But then I saw steam rising from the mountain hot spring.
I couldn’t resist running over.
My sister-in-law put my drunken brother to bed, gathered what we needed, and came to keep watch for me.
She washed my hair.
Her long fingers massaged my scalp gently as we chatted.
She told me she had once had a younger sister as sweet as I was. The girl had loved someone she should not have loved, and it had cost her life.
I hurried to comfort her. I could be her younger sister.
I would never fall in love with the wrong person and leave her and my brother.
She looked at my earnest face, then suddenly smiled.
She thanked Heaven for giving her a new family.
She saw me off in person when I left.
She packed so many lovely things for me that my carriage bulged.
“Qingzhu, may everything go well for you.”
She tucked a fat red envelope into my arms.
“I’ll work harder at court and help my brother put together your betrothal gifts. We’ll bring you home in style.”
“All right.”
She leaned against my brother, looking perfectly happy.
A month after I returned, three important things happened.
My brother came back to court. I no longer had to impersonate Minister Xu and became Miss Xu again.
Zuo Yunnian entered the palace. It seemed the emperor had finally got his wish.
And Princess An Pingyao of the former dynasty, along with its other surviving loyalists, had been captured. They would be executed in three days.
I wondered why my sister-in-law hadn’t returned with my brother.
I wrote to her. Not a single reply came.
An uneasy suspicion began to stir.
Then, at the execution ground where the former dynasty’s loyalists were to be sentenced, I saw a familiar figure.
Only then did I learn my sister-in-law’s surname was An, and her given name Pingyao.
The brother who had loved her so tenderly was the magistrate pronouncing her death sentence.
She was like a pool of dead water.
Not a ripple. Her thin face was worn with exhaustion.
I still remembered her happy words: Heaven had given her a new family.
Our eyes met across the crowd.
Only then did a little light enter hers. Her lips moved.
I made out the words: “The hot spring.”
“The hour has come. Execute them.”
A command tally was thrown down.
My brother stood with his hands behind his back, his expression untroubled.
He watched the blade rise and fall. I searched his eyes for something else.
He really did resemble an immovable green mountain, just as his name suggested.
My sister-in-law looked at him, her eyes full of tumult.
She did not cry. There was even a sort of release in her expression: so this was how it would end.
Their heads were hung on the city wall, exposed to the sun and wind.
Only afterward did I learn
that the boy’s strange clothes had nothing to do with honoring ancestors.
They were what the former dynasty’s royal family wore at celebrations.
That garment must have given my brother, who had concealed his purpose for years, the clue he needed.